Summary The Headline News! Summary asks students to sum up the essence of a lesson; students create their own newspaper headlines and deliver brief news summaries. This strategy is an innovative way to involve students in meaning-making. They are allowed to use only a few words in the headline and must think of a concise way to summarize what they have learned. Small-group discussions provide them with the opportunity to reflect upon what they have heard, read, or seen immediately following the learning experience. When students have small-group discussions, it helps them make connections they may not make on their own. Use Turn-n-Talk strategies or a digital tool, such as a backchannel, to engage students in a steady stream of conversation. See sample headlines in the box below.
Conviction Overturned! Sounds of a Bubble Bursting
(New Information Emerges) (Foreclosures in the Wake of the Failure to Act!! Real Estate Bust) (Investigative Report on the Railroad System) Hopes Dashed for Truce! The Wait Is Over!! (Two Sides Fail to Come to Agreement (Release of a New Anti-Cancer Drug by the FDA) Despite International Urging)
Step-by-Step 1. Familiarize students with headlines and their purpose. Differentiation in Action (Dodge, 2005) describes a process to help students get comfortable with creating headlines. The process familiarizes the whole class with headlines they see in the newspaper. 2. Place students in small groups to create their own headlines for articles (with headlines cut off) that you provide. 3. Model for the entire class how to apply this summarizing technique to develop “headlines” for a passage from a novel or a section of a social studies or science textbook. 4. Ask pairs to create headlines for subsequent passages in the textbook.
5. Have partners share their ideas with the whole class, alternating between the reading/writing activity for a passage and the sharing. 6. You will need to model for students how to write a summary. You can use the following questions to guide your whole-class practice with summarizing: What is the main idea? What do we know so far? What is the significance of the event, discovery, problem, conflict? Whom does it affect? What seems likely for the future?
(shown at right) for this purpose. Over time, The Headline
students’ ability to summarize the essence of
a reading or class discussion will become Consider the following: ● What is the main idea? ● What is the significance of the event, ● What do we know so far? discovery, problem, conflict, etc.?
more refined. ●
The Summary Whom does it affect? ● What seems likely for the future?
Applications and Extensions
At first, you can have students work in small groups Group Members:
small group has created the summary, it will likely be
easier for students to generate a headline individually or together. For some students (those who are right- brained, preferring steps that go from whole-to-part), this process might be easier. Create a Headline News! bulletin board in your classroom so that your students can post their headlines. This bulletin board should remain in place for the entire year, if possible, to help students see all the learning that has taken place. In addition, the bulletin board will help students activate prior knowledge when they try to make connections to new material they are studying. Once students are comfortable with writing headlines, you can give small groups a few minutes during class to prepare an oral summary of the event, chapter, passage, or concept in a one- to two-minute Headline News! Summary. Asking students to prepare and then record a concise summary of a given topic will invite many students to become engaged in a “real-life” production of the “news.” You might want to provide sentence starters such as the following to guide the development of their summary: • “What we know so far is . . .” “At this point, we understand that . . .” • “The conflict appears to be . . .” “The action taken by . . . has led to . . .” • “The problems facing us now are . . .” “What remains to be seen is . . .” (Adapted from Jeffrey Wilhelm’s Action Strategies for Deepening Comprehension)
Focus on ELLs Consider the following: Provide a framed paragraph for a written script for a Headline News! Summary (using sentence starters, such as the ones above). Offer a selection of topics from which to choose. Then have students write the Headline News! Summary from the framed paragraph, using sentence starters. (Providing a choice of topic gives students the opportunity to write about what they feel they know best.)
To challenge advanced learners, place them in a group and ask them to do the following: • Use puns, metaphors, or similes as part of their headlines. • Use other figurative language, such as idiomatic expressions, in their headlines. • Predict a future event in their headlines, based on what they know so far, then write the Headline News! Summary as if the prediction has taken place. • Create two headlines showing opposing viewpoints on the same subject. • Use technology to design and record Headline News! Summaries to share with students in lower or incoming grades. • Design a digital bulletin board with the class’s Headline News! Summaries for in-class display or to share with parents.
TechConnect Consider the following ways to enhance and extend a Headline News! Summary using technology: First, you can inspect headlines from around the world using Google News. Ask students to find similarities and differences in title, word selection, and content focus. Allow students choice in using online tools, such as Google Slides, Microsoft Sway, LucidPress, Canva, and Glogster, when creating digital headlines and summaries. Share them with others on the Internet for comment. Remind students that word processors, such as Google Docs and Microsoft Word, have one-, two-, and three-column layouts to create more traditional “news” summaries. Allow students to create oral HeadlineNews! summaries using apps, such as iTalk on an iPod/iPad, Voice Recorder on a PC, and on websites, such as Vocaroo. Show students how to create an Adobe Spark digital story for their Headline News! Summaries, and ask them to record their voices over the slide and share them with one another for feedback and comment. Introduce students to Cue Prompter, a free teleprompter service, so they can take on the role of a reporter and present their Headline News! Summaries to one another.
three news stories from Google News, Newsela, and Tween Tribune. Carla uses LucidPress, an online design tool connected to her G Suite account, to write a Headline News! story based on the articles. In this example, Carla locates the LucidPress app and connects it to her Google Drive account. She creates a new document and selects the newsletter template. To cite her sources, Carla uses EasyBib, a free bibliography generator available as a Chrome extension, to cite the articles and include them in her story. When complete, Carla can publish her story and share it with the world or download it as a PDF, which can be printed and distributed locally.
●● What is the main idea? ● What is the significance of the event, ●● What do we know so far? discovery, problem, conflict, etc.? ●● Whom does it affect? ● What seems likely for the future?
