Think Twitter

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How are you doing with your anchor word? Consider posting your word in the comments and a short message about how you are doing. For more information about anchor words, see Gretchen Rubin’s blog.

Grit, my word for 2016, takes perseverance and energy--just like developing a habit of new learning strategies does. 

Over the last year I have posted tools for using the highest Return On Investment strategy, identifying similarities and differences. Today let’s look at the second highest ROI strategy, summarizing and notetaking, which still has great results. According to Marzano’s meta-analysis, summarizing and note taking yields a thirty-four percentile gain for learners. 

Summarizing is not only writing down key information, but it is also dismissing less important information. This slight twist of thinking could be a component that learners are missing. When summarizing, think of choosing what is most important and leaving out the rest.

Notice it is important to leave out the rest. The biggest mistake learners make is to keep too much information in the summary. Sorting through what is important and what should be eliminated is the challenge of writing a summary. This skill is more important today than ever before in this abundant information age. Eliminate all but the most important information—think Twitter writing. 

One way to insure eliminating all but the most important is the Three Little Words tool explained in the Dec. 3, 2014 post. Graphic organizers (discussed in the Feb. 15 and Nov. 2015 posts) are other good ways to summarize.

Writing a summary can be a paragraph, an outline, or a graphic organizer—include only the most important information and use your own words for that information. Develop the habit of writing formal or informal summaries to increase learning.

I invite you to summarize this post in the comments section. Challenge yourself to write as few words as possible while keeping the important information.

In the next post, I’ll summarize other top learning strategies that provide more than a twenty percentile gain.