Questar Assessment, Inc.

The TextSense™ program offers teachers a systematic approach to instruction in summarization and tips on the summarization process. It also gives students practice in writing summaries and provides follow-up assessment.

Developed primarily for students in grade 4 to 8, the TextSense program includes everything a teacher needs to effectively integrate summary writing instruction and assessment into the language arts or content area curriculum. Students will learn how to determine what is important in what they read, as well as how to organize and represent information in a way that is coherent, complete, and concise.

When you use the TextSense program to teach your students to write summaries, they learn to:

• Read a passage and determine what it is about
• Identify the most important information
• Organize the information
• Represent the passage, in their own words, in a way that is concise, complete, and coherent
• Write using standard English conventions

The TextSense program not only teaches your students how to write summaries, it gives you the guidelines necessary to evaluate students’ work and monitor their progress.

Components of the TextSense Program
The four elements of the TextSense program, detailed below, may each be purchased separately, but are more effective when used together.

The Teacher's Resource Manual is the central instructional component of the program. It provides all the background information, activities, and materials necessary to integrate summary writing into a language arts or content area curriculum. Reproducible instructional materials include:

• Ten passages of text – some narrative, some expository
• Passage Information Sheets outlining the essential information in each passage
• Graphic Organizers
• Sample student summaries
• Assorted student activity handouts

A key premise of the TextSense program is that assessment should inform instruction. The Rater's Guide takes teachers through the evaluation process, explaining the holistic and analytic rating systems. Each anchor point is explained thoroughly and is illustrated by multiple summaries. Teachers can score summaries quickly, easily, and consistently using the TextSense rating sheets and rubrics included in the Rater's Guide. This volume is an essential complement to the Teacher's Resource Manual.

Classroom Assessment Materials are an integral part of the TextSense program. Each set includes two reproducible passages of text, analyses of the information in each passage, and a set of anchor summaries. Classroom Assessment Materials are currently available at two levels.

Student Response Forms (sold in packages of 30) provide a format for formal evaluation of the process and product of summary writing. These forms have clearly labeled areas for prewriting, drafts, and final versions, as well as printed summary writing tips. They can be used with any of the passages from the Teacher's Resource Manual, Rater's Guide, or Classroom Assessment Materials, or with other tests of the teacher’s choosing. The forms do not include text passages themselves.

Ordering TextSense Materials
All components of the TextSense Summary Writing program – the Teacher's Resource Manual, the Rater's Guide, Classroom Assessment Materials, and Student Response Forms – are available through Questar.