Synthesizing

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Synthesizing

• Putting the Pieces Together

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What Exactly Is Synthesizing?
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Synthesis is about organizing the different
pieces to create a beautiful mosaic, a meaning,
a beauty, greater than the sum of each shiny
piece. Ellin Keene
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Synthesis is a matter of seeing how the
details fit together to draw a conclusion, how
the details solve a mystery, or how they bring
characters (and readers) to a new understanding.
Synthesis involves an aha moment,when, all of a
sudden, everything becomes clear.
Nancy Boyles

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or simply put
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Synthesizing is like putting a puzzle together.
You have to sort out your thinking and put it in
the right place. Clay
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Synthesis is like throwing a rock into a pond
first theres the splash, and then the water
ripples out, making little waves that get bigger
and bigger.
Ellin Keene
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Synthesizing is like baking a cakeall the
different parts mixed together become a whole new
thing.David Harris, Strategies That Work
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Why do we need to put the pieces together anyway?
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In order to construct any kind of meaning in
our literacy learning and our life learning, we
must find ways to cull and prune the details with
which we are bombarded. We must reorganize and
create our own explanations for what we are
learning, our own definitions of our lives at any
particular juncture.
Ellin Keene
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We teach the children to take what they read
and

• Look for important issues, themes, and ideas
• Ask questions
• Create images, relate what they read to prior
  knowledge
• Draw conclusions
• Make judgments
• Predict

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The key is then keeping track of what it all
means
Synthesizing
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Lets Try Our Hand at Synthesizing!
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• Read the excerpt from The Cay that is found on
  the overhead.
• Record your thoughts on paper.
• Read the next part and record your thoughts now.
• Read the last part and record your final
  thoughts.
• How did your thinking change as you read?
• What strategies did you use to understand the
  story?

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How do we teach the students which piece goes
where?
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Teaching synthesis is a challenge. It requires
more think-aloud modeling on the teachers part,
and more conferences focused on helping children
think aloud than other comprehension
strategies.
Ellin Keene
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2. Begin a study on synthesis by helping students
to see how readers monitor overall meaning,
important concepts, and themes as they read,
understanding that their thinking evolves in the
process.
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3. As you read, model stopping now and then to
consider what is important to remember.
Distinguish between facts that are interesting
and those that are important.
Your goal is to get the reader engaged.
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4. Help students to learn to retell the most
important parts of a story.

• Tell whats important
• in a way that makes sense,
• without telling too much.

Gradually release responsibility
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• Stop now and then to ask the students to get with
  partners to synthesize the text so far, then
  collaborate and chart the students thoughts.
• Ask students to read independently for five or
  ten minutes, then stop and find a partner and
  retell in their own words.
• Ask students who are reading the same text to
  synthesize it when they finish, then get together
  and compare thinking.
• 
  Debbie Miller

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5. Have students create a simple summary. In
fiction this might be meeting the characters,
figuring out where the story took place, and
determining the plot.
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Dont Get the
Pieces Confused!!
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Synopsizing vs. Summarizing

• Dont let students become victims of the and
  then he syndrome!
• Students need to understand that summarizing is
  a strategy that allows us to categorize and
  classify the information gathered as readers,
  sorting out significant ideas, events, and other
  pieces of information.
• When reading a long piece, the reader needs to
  pause and regroup every so often, making notes as
  necessary.

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Summarizing vs. Synthesizing

• Summarizing is identifying key points and
  organizing thoughts, a listing of the parts.
  Summarizing usually occurs at the end.
• Synthesizing is the creation of a whole. It goes
  on throughout the process of readingnot just at
  the end. It is bringing together different ideas
  and facts and weaving them together into a
  tapestry, something much larger than all the
  threads.
• 
  Ellin Keene

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Summarizing is part of synthesis. You
cant synthesize if you dont know how to
summarize. Summarizing is the act of briefly
presenting the main point. When teaching
summary, teachers should encourage readers to
retell information by including important ideas
but not telling too much.
Stephanie Harvey
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6. Have students capitalize on opportunities to
share, recommend, and criticize books they have
read.
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7. Have students extend their synthesis of the
literal meaning of a text to the inferential
level.

• Clues Along the Way
• The teacher should provide opportunities for the
  students to stop at certain points in the reading
  to write down their thoughts.
• Fables are great texts to use when beginning this
  process.

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Consider having students bring in a current
article each week. Ask the them to read the
article, tape it to a notebook page, and write a
brief synthesis that includes their own take on
the article.Stephanie Harvey, Nonfiction Matters
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The Pieces Will Only Fit Together If
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The process of synthesizing occurs during reading
when proficient readers

• monitor the overall meaning, important concepts
  and themes in the text, and are aware of text
  elements.
• are aware of text elements and patterns in
  fiction and nonfiction, helping them predict and
  understand the overall meanings or themes.

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Also during reading, proficient readers should

• attend to character, setting, conflict, sequence
  of events, resolution, and theme in fiction, and
  text patterns such as description, chronological,
  cause and effect, comparison/contrast, and
  problem/solution in nonfiction. They use this
  knowledge to make overall decisions about the
  meaning of a text.
• revise their cognitive syntheses as they read.

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The process of synthesizing occurs after reading
when proficient readers

• use synthesis to share, recommend, and critically
  review books they have read.
• purposefully use synthesis to better understand
  what they have read.
• are able to express, through a variety of means,
  a synthesis of what they have read, including
  ideas and themes relevant to the overall meaning
  from the text.

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How do we prompt the students as they try to get
the pieces to fit?

• In just a few sentences, describe this text as if
  you are discussing it with someone who has never
  read it.
• If you were explaining this story to a younger
  child, what would you say?
• At what point did you say to yourself, AHA, now
  I get it!?
• What strategies helped you to figure out the
  meaning of the text?

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Also

• What do you think might be on a test about this
  reading?
• Did this reading change or confirm what you
  thought about _______? Explain.
• How did you go about figuring this out?
• Imagine that you are giving a talk to your class
  about ________. Using information from the text,
  write two ideas you should use in this speech.
• Can you show me a place in the text where your
  thinking changed?
• Do you have some new ideas or information?

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What tools can help put the pieces together?
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Learning Strategies

• Written response to literature
• - Charting thinking records
• - Post-it notes
• - Double entry journals
• - Letters to other readers and writers
• - Quick write
• - Timelines
• Oral responses
• - Four way share
• - Think-pair-share
• - Book clubs
• - Strategy study groups
  Keene, 2001

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Summary
Response
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Author
Title Characters Setting Plot Beyond the
literal interpretation question Possible
answers Synthesis
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What Does the Finished Product Look Like?
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When readers put all of the pieces together, they
can

• identify the essential story line and ask, What
  does it all mean to me?.
• generate questions, apply background knowledge,
  and discuss it with others.

Through the process of synthesizing, their
thinking deepens and their understanding grows.
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You know that students have mastered synthesizing
when,just as they manipulate hundreds of puzzle
pieces to form a new picture, they can arrange
fragments of information until they see a new
pattern take shape.
Stephanie Harvey
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Guiding to Completion
. Booth, David and Larry Swartz. Literacy
Techniques. Ontario, Canada Pembroke
Publishers Limited, 2004 Boyles, Nancy N.
Constructing Meaning Through Kid-Friendly
Comprehension Strategy Instruction. Gainesville,
FL Maupin House, 2004. Harvey, Stephanie.
Nonfiction Matters. Portland, Maine Stenhouse
Publishers,1998. Harvey, Stephanie and Anne
Goudvis. Strategies That Work Teaching
Comprehension to Enhance Understanding. York,
MEStenhouse Publishers, 2000.
Keene, Ellin and Susan Zimmerman. Mosaic of
Thought Teaching Comprehension in a
Readers Workshop. Portsmouth, NH Heinmann,
1997. Miller, Debbie. Reading with Meaning.
Portland, Maine Stenhouse Publishers,
2002.
Zimmerman, Susan and Chryse Hutchins. 7 Keys to
Comprehension How to Help Your Kids Read It
and Get It! New York, NY Three Rivers
Press, 2003.