We shouldn't tell students to summarize information just so they will be able to retell it; there's no point to "just retelling," and our students are not parrots-in-training. We should teach students to summarize with the awareness that it is a strategy that will open a topic for their minds and will make the content stick.

   The current emphasis on proficiency tests makes summarizing a required skill. The goal however is larger than passing the test. We want students to be able to abstract the important ideas and carry them forward as tools for thought.

   Summarizing. This is, perhaps, the most common and most necessary strategy. It requires that the student provide a general recitation of the key text content.

   Learning to summarize helps students add information to the stores of knowledge organized in their brain. It also helps them take information from the text and make it their own.

   Summarizing can be done in writing, but also orally, dramatically, artistically, visually, physically, musically, in groups, or individually. Summarization is one of the most underused teaching techniques we have today, yet research has shown that it yields some of the greatest leaps in comprehension and long-term retention of information.