How To Beat The Online Summaries

One of the main reasons why I love teaching literature is because I get to witness my classes experience the joy of reading great books.  When students grapple with a text, analyze exquisite writing first hand, discover universal themes in classic works, and experience the accomplishment of finishing a challenging text for themselves, they truly grow as students and as people.   

Often, though, kids deny themselves of their own education by choosing to read online summaries rather than actual books.  In fact, this kind of cheating is so prevalent that they often don’t realize how much they are putting themselves at a disadvantage by not engaging with the books themselves.  I want to make sure that my students have these experiences—and so I have developed some strategies to make sure they don’t lose out on reading. 

Here are 7 suggestions for helping your students avoid the temptation to cheat.

Read out loud in class.  This might seem like students are somehow doing less or getting out of “really reading a book,” but I think that it’s justified when the text is sufficiently challenging.  I have taken some of my most struggling students through my units on Homer or Shakespeare by reading to them in class (or playing an audio).  And this way, I am sure that they are truly interacting with the text.  I give them questions to answer or we do a discussion together afterwards, and I know that my classes are not going to go home and cheat their way through our current text.

Give frequent quizzes on the reading and check your questions against the online summaries. When I make reading quizzes, like the ones on the individual chapters in this Gatsby resource, I look for the details that kids who read the book will remember but that aren’t included in the online summaries.  So students who only read the outline will know that Gatsby has a fancy house, but students who read the actual text will remember that Klipspringer’s nickname is “the boarder” because he spends so much time at Gatsby’s house.  This kind of quiz is easy to grade, and it lets my students know that I truly care about their education.

Find books that haven’t been Cliff Noted yet.  It is not easy to keep ahead of the online summaries, but it can be done.  Teaching recently published books is a great way to make sure that the companies who would like to help cheat students out of their education don’t have a chance yet.  An extra bonus of teaching hot-off-the-press texts is that they are more likely to be relevant to students and/or culturally diverse.

Give students time to read in class.  Another simple way to make sure that students are actually reading is to watch them do it.  Once students go home, they will be surrounded by their devices, and they’ll have constant temptations to cheat.  So giving them some class time to just sit and read quietly is a good way to get them engaged with the books and a great antidote to their online lives. 

Let students choose for themselves.  Reading workshop has been one of my favorite days of the week for many reasons, and seeing kids open and read actual books is one of the big ones.  Students are more likely to read when they feel like they have some choice in the matter, and books that they choose themselves are less likely to have online summaries anyway.  Get them to write reading logs on their chosen books, and your classes won’t be losing out on any rigor.

Read more poetry.  This is another way that I make the reading happen in class, and since I happen to love analyzing poetry with my students, this is an easy solution for me.  When students read short, challenging texts, they are less likely to search out a longer explanation of those texts.  Additionally, the skills that they gain by analyzing poetry will help them to feel more confident when they want to try longer books on their own.  So I incorporate poetry all year long in my classes as another way of helping my students avoid the temptation of summaries.

Assess students on their ability to read the text, not on their recall of facts or names.  I have found that when I require students to analyze or write about quotes from the text in the final assessments, I can really tell who read and grappled with the text and who is looking at the words of the book for the first time.  What I especially like about this kind of assessment is that it rewards students who have struggled with a challenging book and put in the effort.  The more time they have spent working through the meaning of the book, the better they do on the final assessment.

Make writing assignments about process and evidence.  When students know that the final writing assignment will require them to provide evidence from the book and that they will have to demonstrate their process for that analysis, they are less likely to turn to online analysis or summaries.  Assign essays that task students with basing their ideas on evidence and analysis, and students will be more likely to engage with the text from the beginning.

Any teacher who has tried to get their students to read one of their favorite books only to discover that they just skimmed an online summary knows one of the frustrations of teaching in the age of technology, but with a few strategies, you can help your students to work through and even enjoy their required reading.