English Language Arts and Reading.4.7.D

The student is expected to

retell, paraphrase, or summarize texts in ways that maintain meaning and logical order;

TEKS Talk image

Knowledge and Skills Statement

Response skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking using multiple texts. The student responds to an increasingly challenging variety of sources that are read, heard, or viewed.

Students are expected to restate something they have read or heard, retaining the intended meaning of the original text while using different words than the original author. Students show their level of understanding and language use when they correctly paraphrase information they read or heard. As in the case of retelling, paraphrasing can be done either verbally or in writing.
When students are asked to retell something—a story, for instance—they are expected to recall the key ideas and supporting details of the story. Retelling is not providing a verbatim report, but rather a cognitive effort to identify and describe, either verbally or in writing, the essential information of a text.
Summarizing text is a specific skill that students use when they reduce information to its main ideas and fundamental points. Students may summarize a piece of writing by identifying its components and determining the order in which they appear in the text. For example, students can be required to summarize an informational article. In this example, students should be able to express the central idea the article conveys, the details that support it, and the order that follows the presentation of ideas throughout the text.

Research

1. Pecjak, S., & Pirc, T. (2018). Developing summarizing skills in 4th grade students: Intervention programmed effects. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 10(5), 571–581. doi:10.26822/iejee.2018541306

Summary: The purpose of the study was to determine whether summarizing skills could be developed in 4th grade primary school students. Findings indicate that teachers can increase student's ability to summarize by systematically training them to use summary skills. The study also revealed that if the learning environment does not encourage students to summarize, it will negatively impact student's reading comprehension.

2. Kletzien, S. B. (2009). Paraphrasing: an effective comprehension strategy. The Reading Teacher, 63(1), 73+. Retrieved from https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A210594945/PROF?u=tea&sid=PROF&xid=69db1b90

Summary: Focusing on individual student's challenges, the authors look at the way students initially approach paraphrasing, and then model for students how to paraphrase by connecting reading with prior knowledge.

3. Fisk, C., & Hurst, B. (2003). Paraphrasing for comprehension. The Reading Teacher, 57(2), 182+. Retrieved from https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A109218181/PROF?u=tea&sid=PROF&xid=5259f22e

Summary: The study acknowledges that most students think paraphrasing is copying from the source and changing a word or two. Noting that this short-circuits students' ability to fully synthesize and understand a text, the authors provide a four-step paraphrasing for comprehension strategy.