Let Me Introduce You to

By Doug Buehl,
Madison East High School teacher
Member, Wisconsin State Reading Association

September 2003

The West Nile virus – what exactly do we need to know about it? A quick mental inventory might elicit some key words basic to understanding this health concern: “infectious,” “birds,” “mosquitoes,” “flu,” “encephalitis,” “risk,” “insect repellent,” and “migration.” If we spliced these terms into a meaningful statement, we might conclude:

“The West Nile virus, carried by mosquitoes who feed on infected birds, is migrating westward, and while the risk to humans is low, some develop flu symptoms and a few die from encephalitis, so health officials recommend using insect repellent as a precaution.”

What we are doing here reflects a critical attribute of our brains at work – the need to synthesize. Our brains are programmed to reduce a mass of information to its meaningful essence, so that we can perceive possible implications. Making sense necessitates sorting details, seeking patterns, and identifying central concepts.

This column has emphasized several synthesizing strategies during recent issues. Not only is synthesizing the foundation for reading comprehension, it is also a difficult process for many of our students.

The strategy
Synthesizing is predicated on the ability to summarize, to select what’s most important and then connect this information in a meaningful way. Topic Introductions comprise a strategy that helps students develop the ability to effectively summarize.

Step 1: To prepare students for summarizing, use the analogy of a personal introduction. If we were to be introduced to someone, what few vital descriptors would help us to really “know” who this person is? Select a well-known person (political leader, athlete, entertainer, or historical figure) and ask students to brainstorm a list of key words that ought to be included in a good introduction to this individual.

For example, an introduction to the athlete Brett Favre might include terms such as: quarterback, Green Bay Packers, NFL, #4, Super Bowl, competitive, MVP, leader, records, and injury-free. Once this list is generated, determine with students whether anything significant is missing and pare the list to maybe seven or eight items that the class deems most essential. Then have students work in pairs to write a one-sentence introduction to Favre that contains each of these important descriptors. For example:

“Brett Favre, the record-setting quarterback of the Green Bay Packers who won three NFL Most Valuable Player awards, is a very competitive leader who took his team to two Super Bowls.”

Step 2: Next, transition to “Topic Introductions.” Ask students to imagine being introduced to a topic rather than a person. What key terms would be necessary for a complete introduction to this topic? Select a familiar topic, and again have students brainstorm relevant descriptors. For example, terms that might be included in an introduction to the topic “CDs” might be: compact disc, music, digital, CD player, computer, burn, data, rewritable, and so forth.
Again, after the class examines the list and culls out agreed-upon key items, pair students and ask them to write a one-sentence Topic Introduc-tion. One version could be:

“CDs, or compact discs, are thin circular objects used to digitally store data, as when they are ‘burned’ in computers or formatted for music that can be played on CD players.”

Students will likely struggle with fitting all the meaningful terms into a single sentence. However, this struggle helps them to combine terms and forces them to adopt more precision in their writing and their thinking. More elaborate Topic Introductions can be expanded to two to three sentences. Ask several pairs to share their Topic Introductions.

Step 3: With sufficient practice, students will be ready to apply the Topic Introduction strategy to important concepts they are studying in the curriculum. Initially, emphasize meaningful combination of terms by providing students with the targeted list of items to be included in the Topic Introduction. This step requires students to demonstrate that they have become conversant with key vocabulary and that they can integrate terminology with other salient details to reduce a mass of information into a well-articulated summary.

Step 4: Determining which terms are most meaningful for inclusion into a Topic Introduction is a much more complex undertaking, and students will need considerable support developing the ability to do this step independently. To model this dynamic, brainstorm with the class which terms would belong in a well-written introduction for a topic of study. Encourage students to refer to text materials and their notes during this phase.

An important caution needs to be interjected at this point. Generating useful terms for a Topic Introduction does not mean a mindless listing of all the bold print terms from a textbook passage. Certainly, a number of the bold print terms deserve to be included in a well-written introduction, but perhaps not all. In addition, significant details and salient facts from the body of a passage will also warrant consideration.

In addition, students may also be tempted to avoid difficult-to-understand but significant terms when they generate their own Topic Introduction target words. After an initial list has been generated, ask students to evaluate it in terms of “must have” items: Are there any missing elements that a meaningful introduction must have? This stage forces students to grapple with aspects of the topic that may not yet be totally clear.

It is also advisable to list all potential target words first, and then engage students in paring back the list to perhaps seven or eight items.

Step 5: The goal is for students to be able to eventually select their own target words for Topic Introductions. Practicing this process with partners or in cooperative groups helps students reach this independence by constantly emerging them in productive discussions about what knowledge is essential to the topic under study.

Posted September 10,, 2003