Hannah Lee Johnson
Reading to Learn
04.18.01
Let’s Go
Rationale:
To learn to read fluently is one of the most important things as a
student you can learn. In today’s lesson I am going to review
silent
reading with the students and then show them how to summarize what they
are reading for greater understanding and long term memory. We are
going
accomplish this by reading through a chapter book one chapter at a time
and after we read a chapter go back and summarize, after each chapter,
in a short paragraph what just happened. Then we can make
predictions
about future events to keep the students interested.
Materials:
1. Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse for every student.
2. Paper and Pencil for each student
Procedures:
1. Ask if any one remember the importance of silent reading.
“Silent reading is an excellent way to improve your own reading.
While silent reading you can read as slow or as fast as you want
to.
If you come across any problem words you can look them up in the
dictionary
to see what they mean. When you are reading silently though, it
is
important that you remember what you are reading. So every now
and
then, stop and make sure that you are understanding what is going on in
the story and not just reading to read words.”
2. Hand out Out of the Dust to every student. “Today we
are going to learn how to summarize a chapter. That means to pick
out what the most important ideas to remember out of the chapter
are.
What do you think important things in a book to remember are? (people,
characteristic, time, plot, action, events) What we want to do is
delete the information that isn’t so important. We want to delete
the information that is trivial and the information that is
redundant.
(Sometimes redundant info. is important to pay attention to though, b/c
the author of the book is trying to tell us to pay attention to that
topic).”
We will have already read the first chapter of the book. So
together
as a class walk the student through picking out the important
characters
and setting. “We know that Billie Jo is the only daughter and she
has two parents. She lives in the mid west, etc. The little
details about the color of the dress Billie Jo is wearing and those
details
may not be important...make sure to read for meaning." After you have
the
main points of the chapter show the students how to combine the facts
in
to a concise paragraph. “Billie Jo lives in the mid west with her
parents. Her mom wants her to learn the piano, but she isn’t to
sure
of it.” If the paragraph is only a sentence then that is
OK.
As long as the main point of the chapter were covered. “This is
critical
for reading, so that you will understand what is going on and you won’t
miss out on the details of the story by all the trivial
information.”
After they students have summarized the chapter have them make their
prediction
about what is going to happen in the next chapter or towards the end of
the story.
3. Have the students read the next chapter by themselves and try to
summarize it on their own. After they have finished, have the
partner
up with someone next to them and compare what they wrote. After
this,
come together as a class and see what they all wrote.
4. After doing this for a few chapters or until the students feel
comfortable
with it. For assessments have them each individually come up to
your
desk and show you their work. You can see then if they truly
understand
how to summarize the chapters.
References:
www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/insights : Reading to learn
www.newberrymedal.com
QUESTIONS??? Email
me.
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