Guided Practice in TechnologyBased Summary Writing

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Guided Practice in Technology-Based Summary
Writing

• Donna Caccamise, Eileen Kintsch, Marita Franzke,
  Angela Eckhoff
• and Walter Kintsch
• University of Colorado

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Summary Street Research Group

• Meghan Tobias
• Maryanne DeHart
• Angela Eckhoff
• Diana Rangl

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Overview

• Introduction guided practice approach
• Review of research findings
• Effects of Summary Street use on quality of
  written summaries
• Transfer to independent summary writing
• Impact on metacognition
• General conclusions

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Background

• Successful decoding does not guarantee good
  comprehension
• Passive reading strategies often an obstacle to
  deep learning
• Texts that are deceptively easy to read - short
  sentences, familiar words - may give a false
  sense of understanding.
• When faced with texts with difficult to grasp
  concepts and unfamiliar vocabulary, many students
  just muddle through, hoping the comprehension
  problems will eventually resolve themselves.

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Background, cont.

• In contrast, expert readers rely on active
  problem solving
• Paraphrase, restate the meaning in their own
  words
• Clarify unfamiliar terms and concepts
• Use the rhethorical structure to build a
  macrostructure
• Self explain difficult ideas
• Find analogies
• Visualize
• Predict outcomes, and so on
• How to get non-expert readers to adopt these
  active reading strategies is the problem
  addressed here.

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Different pathways to expert reading

• Some get it on their own - kids who read a lot
  with deep interest in certain topics
• Direct instruction of good comprehension
  strategies
• Live interventions
• Automated ones
• Guided practice is an important component of all
  these interventions - scaffold the process
• Summary Street environment depends entirely on
  this approach.

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Summary Street - an environment for guided
practice

• Direct instruction plays a minimal role, if at
  all Use of guidelines for how to summarize is
  optional, often ignored.
• Summary writing, through the development of
  macrostructure, builds a foundation for learning
  new content.
• Students are guided via feedback on content as
  they work to improve their summaries through
  several iterations.

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Summary Street Feedback

• Content feedback
• - does the summary contain the right content?
• - enough information on each of the main
• topics?
• - does it include redundant sentences?
• - sentences that are not relevant to the topic,
  or
• too detailed?
• - sentences that are copied from the text?
• Additional feedback on length and spelling errors

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Research findings

• Summary Street does improve the quality of
  students written summaries.
• Franzke et al. study with 8th graders
• The beneficial effects of practice with Summary
  Street also transfer to independent summary
  writing.
• Pre-post summaries from Grades 7, 8, 9
• Does knowledge about how to summarize emerge from
  guided practice in summary writing?
• Think-aloud study with college students

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1. Effect on summary quality

• Procedure 8th-grade students summarized texts
  with SS or word processor during twice weekly
  sessions over 4-week period.
• Students students completed summaries of 6 texts
  on average.
• Texts formed a sequence acc. to difficulty.

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Summary quality, cont.

• Summary Street summaries covered content better
  and maintained high scores as texts became more
  difficult, fewer details.
• Especially effective for medium-to-low performing
  students.

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Summary Quality Data Conclusions

• Practicing summary writing is a valuable
  activity, but students do better when guided
  through the process.
• Summary Street provides individualized feedback
  that lets students debug many writing problems on
  their own.
• The task of getting the right content is
  challenging and supportive environment helps
  students succeed.

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2. Independent summary writing

• The beneficial effects of practice with Summary
  Street also transfer to independent summary
  writing.
• Pre-post summaries from Grades 7, 8, 9

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3. Think-aloud study

• Does knowledge about how to summarize emerge from
  guided practice in summary writing?
• Think-aloud study with college students

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Procedure

• Undergraduate students provided oral reports
  while using Summary Street or a word processor to
  summarize texts 10 each
• 4 texts (1200-2000 words) on different sources of
  energy (coal, biomass, hydropower, propane) -
  same order
• Told to revise at least 3 times.

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Scoring

• TA comments classified into 3 main categories
  indicating metacognitive thinking
• Evaluation
• Planning
• Regulation

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Significant Findings
Summary Street
Control M M Strategy
(SD)
(SD) F Total Strategy Use Total Strategy
84.1
61.1 Use
(12.7) (29.4) p .05, p
.025, p .01
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Significant Findings Cont.
Summary Street Control M
M F STRATEGY
Evaluation Strategies Monitor Task
Performance 19.8 8.3 Planning
Strategies Employ Macro Strategies 1.9
.5 Regulation
Strategies Monitor Record Use 1.1
0 Transform Written Text
8.3 3.1
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Metacognitive data Conclusions

• Both groups engaged in an equivalent number of
  revision cycles
• Summary Street 4 cycles. Control 3 cycles
• But Summary Street users employed planning,
  regulation and evaluation strategies at a
  significantly higher rate than did control
  participants.
• Summary Street feedback that targets problems
  with the content of students summaries also
  encourages more metacognitive reflectivity.

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General Conclusions

• Summary writing is a valuable learning activity
  because it helps readers build a coherent
  textbase understanding, which is the foundation
  for true learning.
• We dont think that these macrostrategies must
  necessarily be explicitly taught.
• We believe that all pathways to expertise require
  a great deal of practice.
• However practice alone does not make perfect.
  Practice is more effective when guided by an
  intelligent, or even a semi-intelligent agent
  like Summary Street.