Summarizing information is a skill I find my sixth grade students struggle with.  It stems from their difficulty synthesizing the information they read, therefore they are unable to put the information in their own words since they never really understood what they read to begin with.  

In brick and mortar school it was easier to activate background knowledge, review reading strategies, and check for understanding.  In virtual school it is much more difficult to teach and model good reading strategies and determine where the breakdown in comprehension is occurring.  

One of the first assignments this year for my sixth grade Language Arts class was to write a summary of a short story they read.  I found the students struggled with this despite very logical and well-written directions in the lesson on how to complete this assignment.  Students had trouble pulling out the important information and would often get distracted by the details.  

I like the Two Column Think Sheet strategy headed with “What the Piece is About/What It Makes Me Think About,” found on page 188 of Strategies
That Work (Harvey, 2007).  This strategy requires students to document not only their understanding of what was read, but their thoughts about the piece as well.  

As a virtual teacher, this strategy works well because it does not require them to mark the text (which they are unable to do since all the reading in online) and it provides insight to which reading strategies (predicting, making connections, questioning, etc.) the student is using as they read which would work well with our asynchronous instruction.  
   
                                                 Reference
Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2007). Strategies that work: Teaching comprehension
      to enhance understanding. Portland, Me: Stenhouse Publishers.

Chapter ten in Strategies That Work by Harvey and Goudvis is very relevant to my virtual world of teaching.  This chapter, “Determining Importance in Text: The Nonfiction Connection,” is so important for my students to understand since there is no direct instruction provided and they are responsible for reading the lessons, completing practice activities and submitting assignments on their own.  I am a resource for my students but they ultimately need to learn how to extract the important information that will aid in their learning of the subject.  

The introduction to this chapter talks about students who have “highlighting disease” and highlight everything on the page.  I find my students have “printing disease” and try to turn their virtual class into a textbook by printing every page of a lesson.  My
students are able to use their notes during their tests and oral exams, but I often find them without any notes or too many notes to quickly find necessary information.  

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with a handful of my 6th grade Language Arts students face-to-face.  I used this time to review how to extract the important information from a lesson to take effective notes and discussed many of the strategies mentioned in this chapter. I always stress to my students to use complete sentences on all assignments, so when I told them they did not have to do this while taking
notes, they were pleasantly surprised.  I encouraged them to sketch pictures, use abbreviations and symbols to make their notes personal to them.  We also looked for features in the lessons that signal importance such as bolded fonts, signal words, headings, and graphic organizers. 
 
Since the objectives are clearly stated at the beginning of each lesson and this is what quizzes and my oral exams are based on, I am trying to teach my students that the objectives are the study guide for the assessment and they just need to know how to extract the important information to be successful.  Harvey and Goudvis mention, ‘teaching with the end in mind,” but I find myself training my virtual students to teach themselves with the end in mind.  
 

                                                      References

Harvey, S., & Goudvis, A. (2007). Strategies that work: Teaching comprehension
      to enhance understanding. Portland, Me: Stenhouse Publishers.