Reading for Meaning: Synthesizing

Library media specialists have used and applied reading skills terminology now popularly found in No Child Left Behind documentation and A Nation at Risk long before that terminology became an integral part of these documents. The current focus on reading skills includes using such strategies as graphic organizers, note taking, skimming, questioning, and summarizing. When readers use multiple reading skills, they are synthesizing; and they are bringing together new ideas and information along with their prior knowledge to form deeper knowledge and understanding of content and the author's purpose. These strategies have long been effectively used by library media specialists.

When researchers apply these same reading skills to the research process, they synthesize information to create new meanings and original thinking. These essential skills are very familiar to library media specialists who teach them through the research process and project-based learning in the library media center. It is also important to ensure that these skills are taught through collaboration so that carts of books are not just delivered to the classroom without any input from the library media specialist. This process emphasizes the importance of having a certified library media specialist in the library media center.

Reading/Information Literacy Skills Shared Responsibility

When the library media specialist is teaching a student how to “seek information for personal learning in a variety of formats and genres” ( Standards for the 21st-Century Learner 4.1.4), she is also teaching students to assess prior knowledge, making connections to what they already know. While using strategies to help students “draw conclusions from information and apply knowledge to curricular areas” ( Standards for the 21st-Century Learner 2.1.3), the library media specialist can simultaneously teach students to make connections between the text and their own knowledge, between the text and what is going on in the world, or between the text and other material the students have read. What may have seemed to be a traditional library skill, to “maintain a critical stance by questioning the validity and accuracy of all information” ( Standards for the 21st-Century Learner 1.2.4), can be seen as an opportunity for the library media specialist and classroom teacher to teach students how to ask questions about what they read and to determine the author's intent. In this way, the classroom teacher can share the responsibility for teaching essential reading skill with a fellow professional trained to teach those same skills in a different context, beyond the reading Basal or worksheet, thus transferring and applying skills in new settings.

Skill Transfer

Teaching skills out of context is necessary so that those skills become embedded in the student's schema. Rhoder, in the article “Mindful Reading: Strategy Training that Facilitates Transfer,” explains that mindful learners are highly active and engaged and are in control of their learning (2002). They use reading strategies to connect their personal experiences with the Texts they encounter in school. To get students to this level of independence, Rhoder believes the classroom teacher or reading teacher cannot be expected to work alone. Instead, “promoting active, mindful reading and teaching students to use strategies is every teacher's responsibility” because those strategies can't be taught one-time in one teacher's classroom (Rhoder 2002, 498). Instead, all teachers must teach these strategies continuously, over time, in multiple classrooms and across grade levels. This is easily made possible for library media specialists who are often the only teacher students see from one grade level to the next.

Rhoder emphasizes that texts used to teach reading strategies should be at the student's instructional level, that teachers should model the strategies and provide practice using real-world tasks, that students should work through one or two strategies at a time in order to become skilled at transferring the strategies to different situations, and that students must have “lots of opportunities to experience success by working hard so they understand that effort can lead to accomplishment” (2002, 499). Rhoder further emphasizes that reading strategies should be taught and then practiced by students out of context of the content area so that students learn how to use each strategy for the many reading purposes they encounter in and out of school (2002). In the media center, students have the opportunity to synthesize, or merge new knowledge with their prior knowledge, not from single-volume Texts and Basal readers, but from a plethora of resources offered at a multitude of reading levels. Thus the differentiated needs of students are met through a carefully designed lesson; each student can find a variety of information and resources at his or her level, apply reading skills necessary for understanding the Texts they have chosen, and synthesize their readings to make new meaning at whatever reading level they happen to be.

The Research Process

Teaching reading strategies in the library media center equates to teaching reading strategies out of context. It makes perfect sense that classroom teachers and library media specialists collaborate often to help students become better readers and deeper thinkers but also learn content knowledge at the same time. In this way, library media specialists can help teachers do their jobs more effectively. They can show the teaching staff that the research process and reading comprehension strategies are mutually supportive and that when combined with student learning in the library media center, students benefit. Just as content area teachers would be remiss in telling students simply to read a section of text and answer questions on a worksheet, library media specialists cannot stop at telling students to take notes as part of a research project. It cannot be assumed that students know how to take notes or how to do so without copying directly from the source. Research instruction that does not articulate each step of the process, in detail, fails to help students complete research tasks reliably. Library media specialists must use best practices in reading instruction to articulate the necessary skills that are only implied by most research approaches. When library media specialists articulate these skills, teachers understand the steps students need to take to read for information, recognize the terminology used to teach those steps, and are more comfortable teaching students directly and explicitly about doing research from start to finish. Students, in turn, know what is expected of them and exactly how to do what is asked of them.

An approach to research that allows students to build on prior knowledge, make connections from the known to the new, and requires students to ask specific, thought-provoking, and meaningful questions about their subject is the best way to ensure that students will not simply be copying from a text or turning in a paper they wrote for another class. This approach allows students to create original work that is interesting to them and their readers. It helps students apply reading skills as they read for meaning—a skill that can be used throughout their lives.

Note Taking and Summarizing

Students should be taught effective note taking and summarizing strategies to effectively answer their questions. Both require students to determine what is important from a text, decide what is not important in a text, and restate in their own words a condensed interpretation of the text. The benefits are huge. Summarizing and note taking require students to analyze what they have read and to think deeply about what is important and what is not, what they understand versus what remains unclear, what makes sense to them and what doesn't connect with prior understanding. This is what it means to synthesize: to determine what is important, rearrange information to retell it in a new way, and to create a new body of work. As a result, when students synthesize information, summarize, and take notes, they gain knowledge and understanding that are retained in long-term memory.

Marzano recommends that students be given a variety of choices for taking notes (2001). Some students might prefer to take notes in an outline format while others prefer webbing. He emphasizes research that shows student achievement on tests increases with the amount of information students take in their notes (2001).

As any library media specialist who has written book reviews knows, summarizing is difficult work. It takes practice and because it cannot be mastered within a few lessons, library media specialists can co-teach this skill both before and during research projects. It must be recognized that classroom teachers are not solely responsible for teaching this reading skill. It is also a research skill and by modeling summarizing and requiring students to summarize throughout the process of note taking and writing, library media specialists share the responsibility for teaching this essential skill.

Synthesizing

Whereas summarizing and note taking require students to deconstruct an author's messages and meanings, syntesis has them do the opposite. When readers and researchers synthesize, they bring various parts togeter to form a new whole, a new meaning, a new message. When they synthesize, students create original work. They can articulate their original thinking through writing or speech, or they can make a model depicting their original thinking. The key here, of course, is that students create original work. Marzano stresses that when it comes to synthesizing, unlike note taking, having less information becomes important. For synthesis, a student must:

• delete trivial and redundant material
• substitute superordinate terms for lists (tree is the superordinate for birch, oak, and maple)
• write a topic sentence (Marzano 2001, 32).

This is an appealing aspect of research for library media specialists and avoids assignments that require little more of students than finding information in a written work and copying that information into their notes. In order to bring students to a higher level of thinking, research projects and assignments that are carefully designed and instructed include reading comprehension strategies within the research process.

Assignments must be scaffolded and include teacher modeling. Employing these strategies will not result in longer research projects, however. When teaching these reading/research strategies, there is less time of-task, as students will know at each step exactly what is required of them. They will spend less time claiming they don't know what to do because the library media specialist and classroom teachers will have modeled how to do each step. Students won't waste precious time looking for more books and Internet Sites, claiming that they “don't have enough information” because they will have carefully chosen needed resources to help them answer their questions, and they will know how to find the answers to their questions witin those resources.

Summary

The same reading strategies taught by classroom teachers to develop strong readers are the strategies also used by library media specialists to teach the research process. Both reading and research involve asking and answering meaningful questions, summarizing and note taking, connecting prior knowledge to new information, visualizing, predicting, rereading, skimming and scanning, using keywords and text features, and determining importance. Each is like a puzzle piece; when the student puts the pieces together, the information has been synthesized to create new meaning and unique insights. Library media specialists who are well versed in these reading strategies offer teachers partners in teaching the strategies, library media centers full of differentiated resources to match the needs of readers, and the experience to help students use those resources to make new meanings and create wholly original work.

References:

American Association of School Librarians. Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. ALA, 2007. http://http://www.ala.org/ala/aasl/aaslprofools/learningstandards/AASL_Learning_Standards_2007.pdf (accessed July 7, 2008).

Marzano, Robert. Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001.

Rhoder, Carol. “Mindful Reading: Strategy Training that Facilitates Transfer.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult literacy 45 (2002): 498–512.