- Summarizer-summarize reading
Catherine hopes to meet her new neighbor and make a good first impression. She learns that Kristi spends some of her time with her Dad in another place (but her parents are not officially divorced, but separated/taking a break) (Lord, 2006, p.92). Catherine goes to Occupational Therapy and brings some new cards and illustrations for Jason. She also plays a song for him by letting him use her CD player but feels weird about touching his hair. They have a nice interaction and she asks to make even more cards for Jason. The next day is rather chaotic at home because Mom is in her home office on the phone working and David is watching a section of a video over and over, and Catherine is supposed to be watching David, but she also wants to work on Jason's cards at her desk. Much to Catherine's surprise, Kristi comes inside the house and introduces herself. Catherine is very nervous about David embarrassing her because Kristi is someone who "will be popular" (Lord, 2006, pp.79-80). Catherine decides to spend time with Kristi instead of going to Occupational Therapy as planned to give Jason his new cards. Catherine and Kristi go to Kristi's bedroom and then Kristi's driveway to play basketball. During that time Catherine tries hard to be the kind of person that Kristi would find to be "cool." She didn't say anything bad about Ryan because Kristi seemed to like him even though Catherine did not because he is mean to David. Kristi put Catherine in a corner and she admitted that Jason was her boyfriend because Kristi saw Catherine's sketchpad (Catherine was more rattled by this than the reader would expect). Catherine returns home around dinnertime and Catherine's mom reports that Jason was disappointed, but brought carrots for Catherine's guinea pigs. Catherine goes to the next Occupational Therapy session to see Jason, give him the cards, apologize for not coming when she said she would, thank him for the carrots, and bring in her guinea pig to show. They have a nice time "talking" and Catherine resolves she has a lot more words she would like to make Jason.
Reading your summary touches on every aspect that I also recall in the story. I find that I would have outlined these details by bullet points throughout each chapter. For me, it would be easier to reference and also reflect back to other details in the book in case I needed to look for anything else in specific.
ReplyDeleteWould you recommend students doing a summary by just writing one paragraph or similar, or have them first organize their thoughts then put them together into paragraph form? Just curious.
I think you bring up a very good point. Bullet points are easier to write and reference. I think it would be important to have some kind of "cap" so that a student is not recording every detail. The benefit of bullets is distinguishing between the points of someone else's story and writing your own original thought. (It is a tough habit to break when students allow plot summary to creep into their writing). If they always used bullet points for summary, it would provide a point of distinguishing perhaps. I wrote mine as a paragraph for my own ease, because I am having trouble with formatting on the blog...there wasn't much thought behind it. Thank you for bringing up this point/idea!
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