Shoot
for the sky: Summarize
Reading
to Learn
Rationale: The main goal of reading
instruction is comprehension. Comprehension reveals that students
understand the material that they are reading. One of the ways
teachers can check to see if students comprehend text is to use
summarization. To summarize, students choose the main ideas and
highlight the important facts while eliminating trivial
information. This lesson will help students develop the skills
necessary to summarize a text. Students will use the following
summarization rules: choose a topic sentence, cross out
unimportant details or repeated ideas, and highlight important
ideas and combine them into one sentence.
Materials: One
copy of Thunderstorms, one copy of Weather Patterns
for each student, one piece of paper for each student, one pencil
for each student.
Summarization Rules:
1. Choose a topic sentence
2. Cross out unimportant details or repeated
ideas
3. Highlight important ideas and combine
them into one sentence.
Procedures:
1. "Good morning class!
Today, we are going to practice a new strategy
while we read. We are going to focus on summarizing because this
will help us to understand what we are reading and become even
better readers! Can anyone tell me what it means to summarize
something? (The teacher will take 2-3 responses)
"Great job! It
is a shorter version of a long story or article which has only the
main facts and ideas. Before we can summarize, we will first need
to learn our summarization rules which are:
1.
Decide what the main idea of the story or article is.
2. Cross out unimportant sentences or
repeated ideas.
3. Highlight the important facts and ideas
and combine them into just a few sentences.
I
am going to pass out a bookmark for each of you. I want you to
write the summarization rules on your bookmark. Once you are
finished writing the rules, you can decorate your bookmark.
Hopefully you will use these bookmarks while you are reading to
help you remember to stop and summarize what you have just read.
This will help your comprehension improve.
Now
that we know all of our rules, I think we are ready to practice
our summarization.
2. "Today, we will practice by reading
several pages of a book and summarizing it. (I will write the
summarization rules on the whiteboard for the students to use
while they read). Make sure you refer to our summarization rules
as you are doing this, and make sure the summary you write is in
your own words. The best way to do this is to read closely, reread
important parts, and to take notes as you read. Remember to cross
out unimportant information or information that is repeated
several times in the text. Before we get started, we will review
our vocabulary words." Vocabulary list: humid and Tropics.
Practice:
-Let's look at what the word humid means.
Humid means containing a lot of moisture.
-In Alabama the air is typically very humid.
The weather is not
humid in Arizona.
- Which place would be humid swamps in
Alabama, or the Rocky Mountains?
-Finish
the sentence: Humidity
can affect the weather because…
Tropics means: Very warm parts of the world
on either side of the Equator.
Many islands are considered Tropics.
Colorado would not be in the Tropics.
Many thunderstorms occur in the Tropics
because of the warm, moist air.
Which animal would you find living in the
Tropics, camels or crocodiles?
Finish the sentence: A place that might be
considered the Topics is… because…
3. Model: After going over the vocabulary
words and the rules with the students, the teacher will model how
to summarize by reading, "Thunderstorm." The teacher will give a
book talk: "This book is all about thunderstorms. It teaches
interesting facts about what a thunderstorm is and what can happen
because of them. What do you do if a thunderstorm comes? We will
have to read to find out!” Now
we are going to read the book together as a class.” The teacher
will read the first two pages and then ask: "How would I summarize
the first two pages? First, I would cross out unimportant details,
then underline important details and combine them into one
sentence. When summarizing, some questions you can ask yourself
that might help guide you are: What are these pages about? What is
the main point? Watch as I model summarizing the first two
paragraphs."
What is it about? Thunderstorms
What is the point? A thunderstorm is a very
powerful storm with strong winds and heavy rain.
“A thunderstorm is a very powerful storm
with strong winds and heavy rain. Thunderstorms are different from
regular storms because they include thunder and lightening. The
rain from thunderstorms can cause floods. Hail can break windows
and ruin crops. Lightening can strike trees and houses. Strong
winds can blow down trees and power lines.”
I
see that the passage talks about thunderstorms three different
times. This tells me that thunderstorms are probably the main idea
of this passage. Next I can look at the action words in the
reading to decide what the important information about
thunderstorms is. I see verbs like: break, blow down, and strike.
All of these words can be combined to describe damage. We want to
include both thunderstorms and damage in our summary.
Summary: Thunderstorms
are extremely powerful storms causing damage with rain, wind, and
lightening.
4. Guided practice: "Let’s all read the next
two paragraphs and see if we can summarize them together!”
"Thunderstorms happen in many parts of the
world. They happen most often in places where the sun is very hot
and the air is very moist. Many of these areas lie in or near the
Tropics. This island lies in the Tropics. A lot of thunderstorms
happen here. When storms roll in from the sea they can bring a lot
of rain and strong winds.”
“I would like each of you to turn to your
partner and share with them what you think the important ideas of
this passage are.”
The
teacher will ask for three responses out loud. “What makes you
think that these are important ideas? Did you ask yourself these
questions?
What words or ideas do we see repeated over
and over? Words describing weather conditions
What are the action words in these
sentences? Happen, lie, roll.
What is it about? It is about where
thunderstorms most often occur.
What is the point? Thunderstorms most often
occur where the sun is hot and the air is moist.
Using this information, we can summarize our
reading.
Summary:
Thunderstorms occur all across the world but are most common in
areas where it is very hot with very moist air.
5. Next, the teacher will give the students
each a copy of Weather Patterns and say: “ Now we are each
going to practice our summarization skills with this book, Weather
Patterns.
This book talks about
the weather of different locations and why weather follows certain
patterns. There are some vocabulary words we need to remind
ourselves of before we start our reading. These words are:
pattern, climate, and ray. Now I would like for you all to read
this book. Remember to highlight important facts and details and
cross out those facts that are not useful. Then, write a sentence
that summarizes each page on your own paper. To help you summarize,
ask yourself: What's it about? What's the point? Good luck!"
To
assess student learning, the teacher will take up the students
written summaries of
Weather Patterns . The teacher will evaluate whether
students gave a good summary based on how well they followed the
three summarization rules given at the beginning of the lesson.
The major goal of teaching the summarization
strategy is to help students improve their reading comprehension.
In order to assess student comprehension of Weather Patterns,
the teacher will ask:
What type of weather pattern happens every
day?
What type of weather pattern happens every
year?
What is the weather like around the equator?
What is a season?
References:
Weather
Patterns. Hughes, Monica. Heinemann Library, 2004. Chicago,
IL.
Thunderstorms. Chambers, Catherine.
Heinemann Library, 2004. Chicago, IL.
“Sum it up” Kayla Jones
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/doorways/jonesrl.htm