All of us, at some point in our educational stage, have had to learn to study comprehensively and synthesize matter to stay with the most important and relevant of a topic. This became increasingly necessary as the number of pages of text and notes increased. Once the habit is acquired it seems simple and quick to do, but how can we teach the little ones to do it?
Whether you are a classroom teacher or a parent of school-age children, reading this article will do you good. In it we give you some keys so that you can teach the little ones to summarize the study topics.
Synthesize and organize information
For an adequate study of the matter that lies ahead we must comply with two key points: the synthesis and organization of the information that we have to study. And how does this begin to be done? Step by Step:
- The first task will be to make a comprehensive reading of our book or notes. With this comprehensive reading, what we try to do is stay with the most important of the subject, its structure, its most relevant data, etc. In this reading, we will only read slowly and understand what it tells us at all times (even if we have to stop to look for a word that we do not know).
- The second step will be to extract the key and main ideas from the text. How will we do it? Underlining! Either with a normal pencil or with a fluorescent highlighter (to taste the colors, pun intended). But how does the child know which ideas are the main ones? Just ask the following question: What is this text about? What are you talking about? By asking himself these two questions, if the child has done a good comprehensive reading, he will be able to immediately go to the most significant data in the text and underline them. We can also try this other question: What do you explain to us in this paragraph or section? What is the most important idea that you explain here in relation to the general theme?
- Scheme: To make an outline correctly we will tell you that you will have to write down each of the important ideas that you have been underlining, as well as look for the relationship between each of them, always writing them down in an orderly and organized way.
- Summary: This should be able to do it following a structured reading of the previous scheme, yes, making an orderly and coherent writing point by point.
We must also let them know that these diagrams and summaries will be made better as they take practice, to avoid frustration and demotivation due to the possible corrections that we make.