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In this support smore, we will take a closer look at various summarization strategies you can use with The Background Essay.

The background essay provides essential information in order for students to contextualize the documents in Step 4. Once students have finished the reading, summarizing the background essay is a great way to show their understanding. In addition to formative data for the teacher, the writing students complete can be also used for their own essay's introduction.

Students can begin by summarizing each paragraph (this can be done during close reading) and then use their work for a final summary of the entire background essay. Or students can use their text codes or markups to write a summary at the end!

Login to DBQ Online and see our skill builder videos on "Captioning By Paragraph" and "Power of Summarizing the BGE".

The are many summarization techniques. When determining a summarization strategy it's important to keep the text structure of the background essay and your student's age and experience in mind. Below are some of our favorite strategies. Have fun and happy DBQing!