A verbal reciprocal summarization protocol was used to help increase student's levels of concept retention. This strategy prompted students to think abstractly and synthesize real life responses from conceptual instruction. The intervention was expected to have a positive impact on student's ability to develop the main and supporting ideas of classroom concepts, and justify their responses with supporting facts. It was also meant to increase conceptual understanding of material presented in class in order that it was practically applied. This intervention was conducted with 22 high school aged students in grades 10–12 of 1 animal science course over a period of 20 instructional days. A 3-phase strategy implemented a 4-question summary review prompt after conceptual instruction, which was modeled after a combination of two different literature based protocols. Students used the 4-question prompt to develop a summary and deliver it verbal to their peers prior to examination. Results show that students were less comfortable with the material presented over the course of the intervention, but came out with a sense of knowledge about the concepts that was more equivalent to their peers. Students were found to have been more successful at deducing main ideas from conceptual instruction when analyzed in written summaries. Attention levels increased as the intervention progressed with students being more focused and on task further into a single class period. Overall, students showed improved summary writing abilities in conjunction with increased abilities to synthesize main ideas within responses to open-ended questions utilizing information from conceptual instruction.