Teacher Life: Objective Summaries

Happy Teacher Tuesday!

Today I'm back with another teacher post.
I'm sharing how I have students create objective summaries in class.

If you're familiar with 8th grade ELA New Learning Standards, then you know one of those is having students create objective summaries or summaries that don't include opinions.

We've been working at this since the beginning of the year and are nearly to the finish line.
At first, I had students read an article with their paired reading partner and write an objective summary together.
We since have moved up to students reading an article with their paired reading partner and writing an objective summary on their own.

Last week I allowed students to determine if they were ready for the graded objective summary.
They could either read another article and do another practice writing an objective summary or choose the article that I've posted below and write a summary for a grade.
I let students have the authority in determining their readiness.
I feel that giving students more ownership and choice in their work and learning helps them to become more responsible and mature learners.

The article

A rubric that I will use to grade them, which also should be used by the student to help them write their summary.

Directions for the assignment.

Here's an example of one students summary and how I grade them.

Once I grade these and give them back, we will soon transition to students reading articles on their own and writing the summaries on their own.

I like to scaffold this type of learning, so that I'm not assessing the students reading comprehension along with their writing skills.
Overtime that ownership of reading/comprehending and writing is built together.