Scot Foresman, Second Grade

Franny and Ginny

By Pat Cummings 

Comprehension Strategy Focus – Synthesis / Summarization 

Objective: Students will clarify understanding by summarizing important events and ideas of a story incident.  

Information for the teacher: Comprehension strategy — Synthesizing information

Ideas taken from the book, Strategies That Work page 25, also see chapter 10. “Synthesizing information involves combining new information with existing knowledge to form an original idea, a new line of thinking, or a new creation.” ... “The need to sift important ideas from interesting details is one challenge that trade literature presents to readers. It is often so well written that rich less important details carry readers away from the essential ideas. In order to synthesize what they read, readers need to stop every now and then, think about what they have read, and take stock of meaning before continuing on through the text. When readers synthesize, they:

• stop and collect their thoughts before reading on
• sift important ideas from less important details
• summarize the information by briefly identifying the main point
• combine these main points into a larger concept or bigger idea
• make generalizations about what they have read

Before reading

Discuss what is synthesis. Discuss with students how summarizing a story or incident is a way of briefly retelling it by including the most important things that happened while leaving out less important details.  

During reading

Set purpose — while you are reading today I want you to synthesize what you are learning. 

Read pages 12-14.

Tell your partner one sentence about what happened in the beginning of the story.

Summarize the beginning together.

Read pages 15-16

Tell your partner one sentence about what happened in the middle of the story.

Summarize the middle together.

Read pages 17-19

Tell you partner one sentence about what happened at the end of the story.

Summarize the ending together. 

After reading

“The text told you some things about Ginny and Franny, and you drew conclusions that pulled together information you had read and what you knew from your own life experiences. As you read, you constantly accumulate information, and you keep this information in mind be subsuming smaller facts into larger generalizations. You summarize, conclude, infer, and generalize, and then you read some more, incorporate the new information, and draw even bigger conclusions” Guided Reading the Four Blocks Way, page 45. 

Summarize the story together: 

At the beginning of the story, the sisters look at ladybugs, and Franny tells Ginny not to copy her. Then, Franny draws a flower and so does Ginny. Franny yells. Ginny goes to her room, and Franny gets worried. At the end, Franny tells Ginny she loves the picture and her.