Inquiry Project
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Summarizing Primary Sources
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This inquiry project was
conducted over the course of three weeks at
In this study, I looked at my students’ ability to analyze and summarize primary documents. I chose to study this skill because I feel that primary documents are an extremely useful source in any history class, yet students are often confused and frustrated when confronted with them. Unlike a textbook or other material students are used to reading, primary documents are rarely to the point. A reader must carefully sift through them to find valuable information. For this reason, primary documents often require a summary of them to be made so that the important information can be pulled from them. This study was conducted over a period of three weeks and there were no major obstacles I felt I had to overcome, except for the students’ apathy and confusion as to why they were asked to summarize the readings I chose. I tried to combat this by explaining how useful primary sources can be as well as explaining the study I was completing based off of their work.
For the sake of privacy, our two students will be labeled Student A and Student
B.
For my baseline assignment I asked students to read an excerpt from the Pacific Railway Act of 1862. This was a legal document drafted by Congress and was very dry and somewhat difficult to sift through, but I felt that the important information was clear and easy to find. I wanted to see if the students were able to ignore the unimportant parts of the reading while picking up on the few key points. Based upon the student responses, I discovered that both students needed work in their summarizing skills. The reading was less than one page long and both students returned a nearly one page long summary. The students had essentially rewritten the entire document in their own words rather than picking out the main points.
For this baseline assessment, the only instructions I gave my students was to summarize the reading. This explains why the summaries the students gave me were so long. In order to improve their skills, I determined that I needed to be explicit when giving directions and should tell them to only write important information in the future. In addition, the teaching strategies I used to try and improve their summarizing skills was to show them two strategies that I use when summarizing. The first was to underline or highlight key information. The second was to write a one sentence summary of every paragraph after it has been read. I felt like these two strategies would work because it gives students a goal while they are reading. They are no longer reading and regurgitating information after they have completed the reading. Rather, with these new techniques students are reading and actively finding important information or summarizing the information while they are still reading. I felt that the first technique would help them determine what important information is and what not important information is while the second skill would help them with their retention.
For my first assignment after the baseline I gave them an excerpt of writing from someone who has witnessed child labor. Prior to giving this assignment I gave a mini lesson on the two techniques outlined above and assigned them to use these techniques while reading and summarizing. I was pleased to see that both students had made tremendous improvements upon their first summary. Rather than submitting a summary that was as long as the initial reading, both students submitted summaries that were much shorter in length. They were still long and had information that was not important, but the second summary showed tremendous improvement over the first. These samples allowed me to see that Student A and Student B are both capable of writing clear, succinct summaries of primary sources. They still struggled with sorting the important information from the not important, but overall they had both improved dramatically. In order to improve this further, I decided to teach a mini lesson where I would present the whole class with a primary source and we would underline important information as a class. By guiding the class and helping them to understand what is important and what is not important when reading, I hoped to help Student A and Student B to be able to better recognize important information when completing the final assessment.
For the second and final assignment, I assigned the class an excerpt of the Preamble and Declaration of Principles of the Knights of Labor of America. This reading described the goals of the Knights of Labor and how they hoped to achieve those goals. Yet again, Student A and Student B made improvements, although only slightly. Their summaries were both shorter and more to the point than they had previously been, but they still failed to find some of the pertinent information. This assignment showed me that Student A and Student B were both capable of taking the main idea out of a reading, but if they were asked to provide 5 key points, they might have difficulties.
Overall I feel as though both of these assignments showed me that my students learned by example. When I provided them with clear guidelines and an example of what I was expecting of them, like I did with my first and second assessments, they performed fairly well. However, when I was unclear and did not provide clear guidelines, like I did with my baseline assessment, they both struggled. Student A and Student B's progress showed me that my teaching strategies are most effective when they are clear and to the point and when I guide by example. Prior to my first assessment I gave a mini lesson on summarizing strategies which I felt was very effective because it was short, simple and practical. My second mini lesson was successful because I was guiding by example. By showing the students what a good summarizer does and how they can create quality summaries, I felt that they students took away valuable information from the lesson.
In conclusion I feel that these assignments have been extremely useful to my students. Summarizing is an extremely valuable skill to have and my students showed that a few simple techniques can make summarizing extremely easy, simple, and that they can create quality summaries. I think that Student A and Student B made a substantial amount of progress, yet there is still room for improvement. However, being that this study was conducted over a short period of time, the progress they made during this study may be lost if it is not reinforced often. As for my students learning needs, this assignment showed me that they need clear, explicit directions when completing any assignment. In addition, I need to provide my students will the tools necessary to complete the assignment. This is a lesson that I can carry with me throughout my teaching career. No matter what skill or topic I may be teaching, it is extremely important that I ensure that my students have the skills necessary to succeed and that I provide them with clear directions and guidelines as to how they can reach the goals I am giving them. For this reason, I believe that this assignment was helpful in allowing me to recognize the simpler things that teachers may sometimes overlook. What may seem simple and easy to a teacher may actually turn out to be very difficult for a student. It is my job to ensure that I provide my students with the skills they need to succeed at whatever task I may be giving them.