Let's Sum it all up!!
Reading to Learn
Rationale:
This lesson will teach students how to summarize the books they are reading and
the importance of being able to summarize.
By learning how to summarize, students will be able to decide the
information they need to pay closer attention to and the information they can
cut out. With summarization
students will be able to better comprehend the text that they read and focus on
the important information.
Materials:
Copy of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Day
for each student, pencil, and paper for each student.
Procedures:
1. Start the lesson by explaining what summarizing is and why it is important.
"When you read passages there is information in there that you don't need
to pay much attention to and there is very important information that you need
to focus on." An example of summarizing
would be if I read the following: (Before reading have the following sentences
written on the board) 'I wanted to go shopping today. I went to the mall. I
bought a pink shirt.' I could
summarize those sentences into 'I bought a pink shirt at the mall today.' (Write
the summarized sentence on the board)
"See how we cut out what was unimportant and put all of the important
facts together? That is what we
will be working on today."
Book talk: "Greg is a middle school student on his summer vacation. His family
is cutting back on vacations in order to save money. Greg goes to the country
club with his friend most days. They run up a pretty big bill buying smoothies.
What will they do? Tell their parents or pay it off themselves? Let's read to
find out."
2. Read the first chapter of Dog Days
to the students. Each student will have their own copy that they can follow
along with while I read. After reading I will go back through the chapter and
write down what I thought were the most important parts of the chapter. We will
make a class list and discuss why we only wrote down the important parts.
"Remember how we silently read.
Silent reading is when we read to ourselves without moving our lips or speaking.
I want you to read this chapter silently
to yourself and as you read think about what points are important and what
points are unimportant. When you
are done reading think about the main facts of the text that are of importance
and write them on your own paper. We will be using your ideas shortly."
3. The students will get into their small groups to go back through the chapter.
"I want each group to discuss what they thought were the most important parts in
this chapter. When we summarize we pull out the important details and discard
the trivial or repeated items. This allows us to summarize what we need to know
from the reading." Have a class discussion on what the students thought were
important points of the text. Discuss why only the important parts of the
chapter should be in the summary.
5. Have each small group write a summary on the text using the parts that they
decided were most important. When each group is done have them come up one at a
time to read their summary. Each
summary should be somewhat similar.
6. For assessment have each student read the second chapter and come up with
their own list of what they saw as the most important ideas. Have them write a
summary on the text and submit it to you for assessment.
Use the following checklist to grade
them by:
1.
Did they list the important parts of the text?
2.
Did they include all important information without being too wordy?
3.
Did they summarize in their own words rather than copy sentence for sentence?
References:
Megan Schmidt, Let's Sum it up!
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/insp/schmidtrl.html
(2009) Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days.
Jeff Kinney.
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