Summarization Strategy: The Triangle Summary

In my classroom, students are required to put their learning in their own words in order to demonstrate that they truly understand something.  This means that the knowledge is theirs, not the textbook's, the internet, or the teacher's words. They must own their own knowledge, not depend on someone or something else to supply words they they use to put down on an assessment.  One of the best ways I know to have students practice owning their understandings is through summarization.
Summarizing is a skill (when practiced correctly) that allows students to weed out what's not important, include what's important, and put it in their own words so they can know it and own it.  In my experience, unfortunately, some students think "summary" means leaving stuff out, skimming the surface, and only including broken fragments of understanding. With a good summary strategy, however, you can fix that.  One of my favorite strategies is below: the triangle summary. (I first learned about the triangle summary from this book.)
The one above is one I use in the graduate class on assessment that I teach.  I use this in place of a boring old presentation about the chapter on formative assessments; I find it's a much better way to review a chapter than copy things from the chapter that they've already read into a presentation and read it to them.  Here's how a triangle summary works:

1. Go through the reading you assigned to the students and highlight the big ideas you want them to pull from the reading.  Ideally, these big ideas should be connected to the objectives you want students to learn that they have already reviewed.  In fact, it's those objectives that students should be reading for in the first place.
   
2. Write 5-10 "questions" that you want students to answer in your triangle.  The first question should be answered in one word; the second, in two words; the third, in three words....I'm sure you see the pattern here.  I like this because it forces students to summarize within the summary itself, and doesn't allow students to copy from the text-they must think about how to summarize their answers from the reading using only the allotted amount of words.
   
3. Write your 5-10 questions according to the levels of Webb's Depth of Knowledge.  Remember, Webb's DOK focuses on the amount of strategic thinking inherent in the task, not the verb.  This is a great way to differentiate an assignment based on levels of thinking. (Speaking of differentiation, you could develop 2-3 different triangle summaries for students at different readiness...of the possibilities!)
   
4. Have students summarize all of their answers in a paragraph below the triangle.  Since my objectives all hook in to an essential question, I usually have students answer the essential question in a paragraph using the information they summarized in the triangle.
   

This strategy is also a good Common Core strategy because it forces students to go back into the text for multiple readings. If you really want to Common Core this up, have students put page numbers next to their triangle answers or create a chart below the triangle where students must cite textual evidence in order to support their triangle answers.
Whether or not you buy into the Common Core, summarizing is just a good strategy that helps kids learn.  It helps students put understandings in their own words. It helps them make their own meaning-and that's a skill they'll need for life.