About this strategy
Synthesising is the most complex of the six strategies. It requires students to bring together ideas from multiple sources, combine them with their own thinking, and create something new — a new argument, a new perspective, or a new creative work. The activities in this chapter develop students' ability to manage and integrate multiple texts, building towards the kind of sustained, independent thinking required at senior levels.
The four activities
Each activity includes detailed teacher instructions, student-facing instructions, a worked example, reflection prompts, and extension ideas in the book.
Mega Map
A comprehensive mind map that pulls together all ideas from across a course of study — characterisation, narrative structure, language, imagery, symbolism, themes, author's values, context and key quotes. Students create connections between different "bubbles," developing new, deeper awareness of how the parts of a text contribute to the whole.
- Teacher instructions
- Student handout
- Worked example
- Reflect & Extend
Strategy Hub
A graphic organiser that collects the key information from each of the five other strategies into one page. Students transfer key ideas from their prior Making Connections, Visualising, Questioning, Inferring and Summarising work into the relevant sections. At the centre, they write a short statement encapsulating the most important meaning of the text.
- Teacher instructions
- Student handout
- Worked example
- Reflect & Extend
Synthesising Mood Board
Students create a collage of words, images, colours and textures that captures the essence of a text, drawing on multimodal resources. The mood board synthesises understanding of themes, characterisation, symbolism, style and narrative. It can be created physically or digitally using tools like Canva or Google Slides.
- Teacher instructions
- Student handout
- Worked example
- Reflect & Extend
The Text File
A cumulative document that evolves over an entire unit of work, serving as a record of all interesting points, character observations, theme notes, key quotes and anything else the reader uncovers. Students constantly update and refine it. By senior school, creating a Text File should be the first thing students do when encountering a new text.
- Teacher instructions
- Student handout
- Worked example
- Reflect & Extend
Get the full activities
The book includes complete instructions, reproducible student handouts, real student examples, reflection questions, and extension ideas for all four activities.
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