Rationale:
A very important
goal for all children to learn in reading is comprehension. One
of the ways a child can reach comprehension is through
summarization. This lesson will guide children to summarize
stories using steps as a group and then individually.
Materials:
-Paper
-Pencil
-Chalkboard
-Chalk
-A bookmark for
each student with the 5 summarization steps on it
Summarization steps:
1. Pick out
important details that are necessary to the story.
2. Pick out the
less important or repeated ideas from the passage and eliminate them.
3. Highlight
the important and necessary details using key words.
4. Pick a topic
sentence
5. Invent a
topic sentence if there is none.
-Copy of Space
Rock Makes a Crash Landing, National Geographic Kids News
for each student.
Procedure:
1. Begin by asking
students if anyone knows what comprehension means. Wait for
response and then review their responses. "Good job! Comprehension is
understanding what we are reading and then remembering it after we are
done. Today we are going to learn a couple of steps that are
going to help us comprehend our reading. This new technique is
called summarization. When we summarize, we choose the most
important parts of the story or passage that we are reading. The
whole time we are doing this, we take out some of the stuff that really
doesn’t have anything to do with the main idea."
2. Explain
summarization. "Our new tool
has 5 easy steps to remember." Write them on the board as
they are explained so students will follow along. "The first step is to pick out important
details that we think are necessary to the story. Number two says
to pick out the less important ideas or ideas that are repeated and
take them away. Number three says to highlight the important and
necessary details using key words. Next, we pick a topic
sentence. Our last step is it invent a topic sentence if we don’t
have one. I’m going to pass out bookmarks to each of you that
have these steps on them so you won’t forget our 5 steps of
summarization. You can use these whenever you need a little help."
3. "Alright, now that we are familiar with
comprehension and summarization, we are going to read a passage from an
article and put our steps into action. Read the first paragraph
SILENTLY to yourselves. While you are reading, make sure that you
are getting enough information to summarize the paragraph. When
summarizing, remember how key it is to make sure that you are trying to
figure out the important details from the ones that might not be so
important. Raise your hand when you are done so we’ll know when
to move on."
4. After the class
is finished reading, summarize the first paragraph with the whole class
making sure they understand the steps of summarization. While
doing this as a class, make sure to model the five steps. "After reading the first paragraph, here
are the main points that I came up with." Write the
following on the board: 1. A grapefruit size meteorite
crashed through a roof. 2. The house was in New
Zealand. "Did anybody get
anything different than I did?" If someone did, write that
on the board as well. "As I
keep reading, I’m going to use all of our steps. I just did our
first step and picked out what I thought were the important
details. My next step is to pick out the less important points
from the paragraph. I think the these would be: 1.
The meteorite slammed into a couch. 2. Hit the
ceiling. 3. It rolled under a table." Write
these on the board. "Did
anyone get something different?" If they did, write it on
the board. "What is my next
step?" Wait for student to suggest: highlight some
keywords. "Great job!
You’re right. I thought that the keywords were grapefruit sized,
meteorite, roof, and New Zealand. Did anybody get another word?"
If they did, write it on the board. "What do I need to do now?"
Wait for student response. "Right!
I need to write a topic sentence. The topic sentence I came up
with is:" Write this sentence on the board: "A grapefruit sized meteorite crashed
through the roof of a house in New Zealand. Did somebody get
something else?" If they did, write it on the board and
discuss why they chose that. "Good!
Since we just came up with our topic sentence, we don’t need to do step
5 since that step is to invent a topic sentence." Make
sure that all of this is written on the board so that they will be able
to use it when they are reading the rest of the article by themselves.
5. "Does everybody feel comfortable with
summarizing now? Great! Now that you are all pros, I want
you to read the rest of the article silently and summarize it using our
steps. If you need any help you can look on the board or at your
bookmarks that each of you have."
6. When they have
finished reading silently, they will summarize the article on their
own. "Now that you are all
finished reading, take out your piece of paper and pencil and summarize
the article. Make sure that you remember to list the important
details of the article. Separate the important details from the
less important ones. Then, make sure you list your keywords and
then using your keywords and your main points, form your topic
sentence. If you have any questions, please raise your hand and
I’ll come and help you!"
7. For assessment, I will take up the
student’s summarizations to see how well they understood the
concept. I will use the bookmarks as my own checklist to make
sure that they used all of the steps of summarization correctly.
The entire time they are working on them though, I will walk around to
make sure that they are following the steps written on the board and on
their bookmarks.
References:
“Space Rock Makes a Crash
Landing.” Staff. National Geographics Kids Magazine.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/kids/space.html
18 April 2005.
Vest, Amy. What’s the Main
Idea??
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/breakthroughs/vestrl.html
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