"Synthesizing while reading is critical to understanding the big ideas in informational texts" (Cummins & Stallmeyer-Gerard 395).
Throughout my schooling experience, I had always considered English/Language Arts to be my strong suit when it came to academics. I loved to write, I could spell any word you threw at me, and I was a self-proclaimed member of the "Grammar Police" who lost respect for anyone who could not distinguish between "you're" and "your" by our senior year of high school. But for some reason, I struggled when it came to reading and responding because I faced a great deal of difficulty when it came to synthesizing information. To this day, I feel that I have to work harder than the average college student to complete assignments that require synthesis skills. I have a slew of devices that I rely on when attempting to synthesize, one of which is quite similar to the article's cake baking analogy. I have found that while reading any kind of text, it is helpful to extract and write down key points (the baking ingredients). I then examine everything I have written, and try to formulate some type of umbrella statement (the cake) that incorporates the details I have noted. After establishing an effective active reading strategy that works for me, I feel much more comfortable with my synthesis skills. However, it bothers me that I am unable to remember specifically being taught how to synthesize information in my younger years of schooling. All I can recall is having to "identify the main idea" of a passage countless times, feeling confused, and resorting to guessing. It has become clear, especially with the newly developed informational text focused ELA Common Core State Standards, that a great deal of emphasis should be placed on teaching and developing students' synthesis skills in the classroom.
In my 4th grade practicum classroom, I have thankfully already seen synthesis skills being taught. The other day, my teacher gave a lesson on determining the main idea of a text, and identifying details that support that main idea. The students were given a text about Inuit culture, and a worksheet with 5 partially completed charts that corresponded to 5 different sections in the text. Each chart had blank spaces for the "Main Idea" and "Supporting Details." Some sections were filled in already, and it was the students' job to complete each chart by identifying the missing information. My cooperating teacher asked me to work with a few struggling students at the back table of the classroom. I read the passages aloud while the students followed along in their text. I explained to the students before beginning to read that they should listen to the descriptive details in the text, and think about one big idea that they all point to. By talking my students through each step of synthesizing, I watched as their eyes lit up with enough confidence to volunteer answers for the charts. Upon finishing the worksheet, I felt that my students had a greater grasp of synthesis than I had at their age. I hope that my cooperating teacher continues to give our students more practice with synthesizing so they can learn this important skill, and so I can have more opportunities to practice teaching it!
