Text Set: Summarizing and Synthesizing

Dungy, T. You Can Do It! (2008). New York: Little Simon Inspirations.

Tony Dungy, former NFL player and current head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, wrote this book on fulfilling your dreams. The book is about a young boy named Linden whose family and big brother Tony help him to discover his passion. After realizing that he loves to make people smile, he prayed that God would help him discover what he wanted to do when he grew up. After visiting the dentist in order to fix a terrible tooth ache he felt extremely happy. He knew he could make people laugh with his jokes and imitations, but he never realized that something like being a dentist also made people smile. Going to the dentist sparked his dream and he continued to question the dentist on his career. After leaving the dentists office he was sure that he had discovered his “it.” His new found dream was to become a dentist. Because he had the support of his loving family and God, he knew he could do it.

Strategy Connection: This book would be a very good book for students learning how to summarize. They could summarize the book and then write notes and reactions on the side. From their notes and reactions, they could use the summarization in order to create their own story about what they want to do when they grow up. This would be a very fun book to summarize, and the meaning and moral behind it is great.

Falconer, I. Olivia Helps with Christmas. (2006). New York: Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

This book was about a family of pigs and their Christmas Eve journey. The piglets, filled with anxiousness, helped their parents to prepare for Christmas morning. Waiting, hour by hour, for Santa to get there they kept busy by preparing food, decorating the tree, untangling the lights, setting the table, putting out treats for Santa, and singing Christmas Carols. Finally, after a restless night, Santa came and the piglets were filled with joy and surprise at the presents that lay under the tree. The piglets opened their presents with great excitement and rushed to try them all out. The youngest baby even learned how to walk in order to get to her presents sooner. After an exhausting day, Olivia fell straight asleep only to be filled with big dreams again.

Strategy Connection: This book would be a great holiday book that could be used in a young class to introduce the idea of summarization. It is a simple read, so it would be easy for the children to summarize. You could have students read in groups of two or three, or read it to the entire class, and as a large group come up with ideas about the summarization of the story.

Curtis, J.L. & Cornell, L. Big Words for Little People. (2008). New York: Joanna Cotler Books.

This book has clever rhymes and riddles that put large words into context in a child’s life in order to teach the definition and spelling of big words. It is a clever and witty approach to learning.

Strategy Connection: This book is perfect to use when teaching children how to summarize and synthesize. Students can read through the book and summarize. In the summarization of the book, the "big words" should be picked out of the text, summarizing the meaning. In this way, students will be creating a word list. From this summarization, the definition and spelling of "big words" can be learned. An alternate definition may then be synthesized from the summarization, creating a deeper, lasting meaning.