Cutting Out the Fat?!?

Today regular classes read through Chapter 10 Section 2, pages 302-307, "The Louisiana Purchase & Exploration" using a reading/summarizing strategy known as Cutting Out the Fat. Each student was assigned a sub-section of Section 2 on pages 302-307, after reading their sections to themselves, students then wrote out a sentence that would be summarize their sub-section but they could only use the amount of words that Mr. Xanders gave them (10, 13, 12, 11, etc.). Once they've come up with their sentence, then they get together with the other students who were assigned the same sub-section and they create a sentence or edit one of their own but using less words. Afterwards, one student from each group comes to the white board and writes their group's sentence down for the entire class to see. We will continue this strategy tomorrow with more of the discussion aspect.