The document outlines strategies for teaching students to write from sources, emphasizing the importance of synthesis through connecting, selecting, and organizing ideas. It suggests various classroom activities to enhance students' abilities to understand and manipulate information from multiple texts and highlights the need for modeling and practice to foster these skills. Additionally, it underscores the significance of collaborative learning and the use of structured writing prompts to support the writing process.

1. Writing from Sources
Emily Kissner
June 2014

2. Agenda
1. Why write from sources? (see Part 1)
2. Steps for synthesis (see Part 1)
3. Unpacking the process
4. Classroom activities

3. The good news
The process of integrating ideas and figuring
out how to say them helps students to
become stronger readers and writers.

4. Unpacking the process
The task of writing from sources becomes
easier if we unpack the process and look at
all of the low-stakes, high-impact classroom
activities that we can do to promote the
process.

5. Connecting
Exploring connections between ideas is
important for students who are writing from
sources.

6. Connecting
Two ideas can:
 Say the Same
 Go Against (Contradict)
 Explain and Elaborate
 Connect

7. Dive into some books!
Look at sets of texts on a similar topic. Can
you find examples of the different
relationships?

8. Dive into some books!
How might this activity be helpful for
students? What discussions might arise?

9. Moving to writing
These different idea relationships can be
expressed using different transition words.

10. Moving to writing
Teaching students how to connect transitions
to kinds of thinking could help them to make
clear connections in their writing.

11. Organizing
Not surprisingly, students in research studies
on synthesis writing did not do well with
organizing final products.

12. Organizing
“It is significant that students started to write
with hardly any planning…Our interpretation
is that, faced with the difficulty of
constructing their own text, the students
borrow the organization and structure of the
STs [source texts].”
-Sole et al, 2013

13. Organizing
Small classroom tasks that require students to
go across genres can force them to create
their own organizational patterns.

14. Organizing

15. Organizing
In this activity, students take
information expressed in interview
form and transform the details into
a new paragraph.

16. Organizing
For younger students, going from narrative to
informational can be useful.

17. Organizing
For younger students, going from narrative to
informational can be useful.
After reading multiple books in a
series, students can write a paragraph
to describe the main character.

18. Organizing
For younger students, going from narrative to
informational can be useful.
Students will draw information from
multiple sources to support their
ideas.

19. Organizing
Teaching students how to categorize
information as they go will help them with the
organization process later.

20. Organizing
Teaching students how to categorize
information as they go will help them with the
organization process later.
Note-taking pages that encourage
students to take notes in categories
or sub-topics and synthesize main
ideas can be helpful for students of
all ages.

21. Organizing
No matter what activities you try, it’s
important to model rereading with students.
Going back to source material is linked to
better synthesis writing.

22. Selecting
Selecting appropriate sources becomes
an expectation in grade 3.

23. Selecting
Readers need to use the “text analyst” role
to figure out which sources are credible.
Digital think-alouds are an important way
to help students understand how to do
this.

24. Selecting
What classroom activities have you tried
to help students select information?
For more information on selecting and
using information, look at “Building Online
Reading Comprehension.”

25. Classroom Activities
Writing a full-scale synthesis is not something
that we can have students do in one week.
Synthesis—and the skills of selection, connection,
and organization--needs to permeate our
classroom culture. Here are some activities to
try!

26. Taking Notes from a Video
In this activity, students view live web cams to
take notes and write observations.

27. Taking Notes from a Video
How can this help students to write from
sources? What benefits do you see?

28. Topic Studies
In a topic study, students read many different
texts on a given topic.

29. Topic Studies
The teacher guides students into looking for
connections between ideas, building
awareness of idea relationships.

30. Topic Studies
In fact, resolving ideas that seem
contradictory helps students to build strong
understandings.

31. Topic Studies
What experiences have you had with topic
studies? How have students learned from
them?

32. Weather Explorations
“I heard that…”
“The news said…”
Students are always eager to discuss the
weather. Take advantage of this to work
together to write a paragraph from sources.

33. Weather Explorations
-What kinds of connections between ideas are
used in this task?
-How could this lead to a more formal writing
prompt?

34. Reading Firsthand Accounts
Highlighting firsthand accounts of information
helps students to realize that information can
come from various sources.

35. Reading Firsthand Accounts
This can be woven into other lessons,
including science and social studies.

36. Whole-Class Research Projects
Instead of diving into individual research
projects, try researching a topic as a class. This
can weave together online reading
comprehension and writing from sources.

37. Whole-Class Research Projects
This can also help you to see which processes
are difficult for students, and what kinds of
instruction students need.

38. Small-scale Lessons
Which of these ideas have you tried, or would
you like to try? How did they build synthesis
skills?

39. Formal Writing from Sources
Use RAFTS-style writing prompts
Provide some sources, especially sources at
students’ reading levels
Support students with organization
Suggest transitions to show connections
Support a recursive process
As you plan formal writing projects, keep these best
practices in mind:

40. Time to Work!
Create materials that will support writing from
sources in your classroom!
•Small scale activities
•Formal prompts
•Lists of links and materials
•Connected theme sets

41. References
Gil, Laura, Ivar Braten, Eduardo Vidal-Abarca, and Helge StromsoI. 2010. “Summary versus
Argument Tasks when Working with Multiple Documents: Which Is Better for Whom?”
Contemporary Educational Psychology, v35 n3 p157-173.
Mateos, Mar and Isabel Sole. 2009. “Synthesising Information from Various Texts: A Study of
Procedures and Products at Different Educational Levels.” European Journal of Psychology of
Education, v24 n4 p435-451.
Mateos, Mar, Elena Martin, Ruth Villalon, and Maria Luna. 2008. “Reading and Writing to
Learn in Secondary Education: Online Processing Activity and Written Products in
Summarizing and Synthesizing Tasks.” Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, v21
n7 p675-697.
Sole, Isabel, Mariana Miras, Nuria Castells, Sandra Espino, and Marta Minguela. 2013.
“Integrating Information: An Analysis of the Processes Involved and the Products Generated
in a Written Synthesis Task.” Written Communication, v30 n1 p63-90.
Spivey, N.N. 1997. “Transforming texts: Constructive processes in reading and writing.”
Written Communication, 7, 256–287.
Zhang, Cui. 2013. “Effect of Instruction on ESL Students' Synthesis Writing.” Journal of Second
Language Writing, v22 n1 p51-67.