A One Sentence Summary is a higher level Formative Assessment that requires students to 'chunk', or synthesize large amounts of information into a single sentence. Ask students to answer the questions “Who Did or Does What to Whom, When, Where, How, and Why?” concerning a recent and relevant topic. Students can be asked to do this quickly or can be allowed to map out their answers on their own or with a partner/small group. This provides the teacher with a powerful piece of data that can also be used continuously over time in a single topic to provide students with an excellent summary of their work for studying or comparing with other students.

One Sentence Summaries can help teachers:

• Get students to synthesize large amounts of data carefully

• Gather powerful data regarding learning over time

• Solidify recent learnings with carefully constructed questions requiring considerable thought to assemble

• Providing focus points for the summary can help students focus their efforts where you want them

• If done anonymously you can use returned summaries as a place for class reflection, learning, or discussion

• After a few summaries, students can be asked to complete a global summary of a larger idea. This will be a huge challenge but could yield some interesting data!

• One Minute Summaries can be shared between partners or groups, each time it is shared a new sentence is added, (you can provide a new focus for each sentence)