Friday, January 18, 2013

Don't Just Summarize it; Tweet it!

An easy yet effective way to get students to summarize what they have read is to have them write tweets. In previous years, our students have written GISTs which have a word limit so students can focus on the big idea and use their own words. Tweeting is similar to writing a GIST. Responses are brief, and with guidance from the teacher, students can improve summarizing skills. Students do not actually post to Twitter; they write their responses on a sheet of paper using Twitter's format, which means using 140 characters or less and adding a hashtag (#) at the end to create a topic for the Tweet. Because many students are already familiar with Twitter, this strategy increases student engagement, and it works very well in conjunction with other strategies. Mrs. Townsend says this:

"I had the students read an article about friction.  They completed a 3-2-1 activity with it.  Then I had them summarize the article by writing a "tweet" about it.  Many of them included a hash tag with it.  It got them very focused on the real meat of the article!"

Mrs. Bruce adds some additional ways to use this strategy:

 "Using Twitter’s format, create micropoems, using hashtags like #poetweet or #micropoem.   Students write haikus or six word stories, a concept that began when Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a story in six words.  


Using the Twitter format in a Spanish class, students can translate a short sentence after it has been 'make believed' tweeted.   They can exchange the tweets and see who can translate the fastest.

Using the Twitter format, have the students summarize or reflect on what they learned that day in class."

I used tweeting in English 9 while reading Romeo and Juilet. Students wrote a tweet to summarize each scene in Act I. I also gave them the option of writing an additional tweet from a character's point-of-view. The responses were both insightful (I could easily monitor student comprehension) and entertaining (some of the hashtags were hillarious).

This strategy is quick, requires no preparation, and allows students to practice the important reading skill of summarizing. Try it; I think you will like the result!


 

1 comments:

Paige Hicks said...

I have used pseudo-tweets in class for a few years. However, I use them in a different way. We tweet from the perspective of someone. You can assign a specific person or something more general. For example, last week, my sophomores tweeted as residents of Jamestown about #Jamestownprobz. This brings in higher-order thinking. I can see that being useful in literature, also, as students could tweet from the perspective of a character in a story or novel.
I also have a teacher Twitter page. Follow me @Hickshistory.

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