Employing a pretest-posttest comparison group design to determine the Written Summarization Strategy's effect, I instructed the experimental group of students in the Fundamentals of Paraphrasing and Summarizing Strategy as the foundation for the Written Summarization Strategy. Based on the literature, good summarizers (a) begin summarizing immediately as they read, (b) attend to structure and know where important information is found, (c) employ a set of rules for summarizing, (d) use judgement and effort to read skeptically by self-questioning, (e) underline and cross out information while they read, and (f) polish their final products.
Instruction took place over 11 sessions and the classes included students with disabilities and typically achieving students. The results for students with and without disabilities revealed a statistically significant difference between the pre- and the post-test scores for students who participated in the instruction. Difference from pretest to posttest for students with disabilities was 26% to 76%, and for all other students 27% to 86%.3