Teacher background

Comprehension Reading Strategy: Synthesizing
The Wisconsin Literacy Education and Reading Network Source offers background information and lesson plans on synthesizing.

Synthesizing
This site from the Ohio Resource Center for Mathematics, Science and Reading is designed for middle school, but many of the ideas could be adapted for younger students.

Key Concept: Synthesis
These ideas for synthesizing instruction are from the Greece Central School District in New York. The activities are designed for grades 6-12; however the ideas could be adapted for use with younger students.

Anticipation Guides
This is a collection of anticipation guides for fiction and non-fiction books for K-5 students.

Three Minute Pause
The Three-Minute Pause provides a chance for students to summarize key ideas and add their own thoughts. This simple technique from ReadingQuest.org gives students a chance to consolidate and clarify their emerging understandings.

Synthesize New Information
This page from the Journey North site provides a list of ideas for activities to help students synthesize. The following lesson plans from the same site give concrete examples for using this reading strategy in science content reading.
Synthesis Poetry
Two Word Reflection and Think-Ink-Pair-Share
Sketch to Stretch
Expert Panel

Student Activity Sites

Fractured Fairy Tale Tool
This interactive tool encourages students to create their own fractured fairy tales, by guiding them through making simple changes to "Little Red Riding Hood," "Jack and the Beanstalk" or "The Princess and the Pea."
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association

Multi-genre Mapper
This interactive invites students to create original multigenre, multimodal works-one drawing and three written texts. Students could synthesize their ideas about a topic or idea and present their synthesis using poetry, expository text, drawing, and so forth.
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association

Blending Fiction and Nonfiction to Improve Comprehension and Writing Skills
This writing lesson integrates fiction and nonfiction to create a blended genre that improves students' critical comprehension and writing skills. Students learn about a content area topic through a text set and Internet research, and then blend elements of fiction and nonfiction to create an original piece that demonstrates new knowledge.
From Read-Write-Think, the International Reading Association

Weather Dance
This lesson plan for grades 3-4 encourages students to synthesize their knowledge of weather through dance movements. A great way to cross curricular lines and practice synthesizing while meeting science and dance/movement standards!
From ArtsWork, Arizona State University

Finding the Heart in History: Making Connections through Poetry
Students analyze and interpret primary source content, then synthesize the information and retell it from their own perspective. Students choose a historical image and write a poem online.
From the Library of Congress