While summarizing has been shown to be one of the most effective strategies for building content knowledge, that gain only applies when students are allowed to make their own judgements about what’s important and frame their summaries for an audience. When we ask them to "learn" the teacher's summary - they are reduced to memorizing "another fact."When we ask our students to create authentic summaries (with audience and purpose) we give students a chance to reflect on their learning. Instead of simply testing them for factual knowledge, students can be asked:
What did I think was important?
How did I share that with my audience?
Did my summary match audience and purpose?
Is my summary accurate?
Did I use my own words and style?
What did I learn from the activity?
