About 7 years ago I went to a workshop on literacy and learned a little instructional strategy that has been a go-to many times since: the 25-word summary. It’s as simple as it sounds, only it is not.
For me, it’s easy to ask this of my students, they, on the other hand, are regularly challenged by the strategy - and that is the point. To write an accurate and useful summary, regardless of the text being used, the students need to really understand the main idea/s. Not only that, they need to be creative with their writing and conscious of the exact words they do or do not use. There is no room for fluff within 25.
In today’s class, the students took the homework summary they wrote in response to an academic article, “Prisoners of Geography” about Robert Hausmann’s theory on the links between geography and economic development. In many cases the students’ original “summary” was more than a half-page, typed. So when I said 25 words in the new summary, there was a collective gasp in the room.
The students worked together in groups of three, and it took some time. It was worth it because they were successful not only in staying within the word limit, but more importantly, 100% of the students shared that they understood the challenging content better as a result of the 25-word summary process.
