Summarizing Puts the Pieces
Together
I.
Rationale: The main goal of
reading is comprehension. Students can use many strategies to
comprehend
written text. One of the most important strategies for children
to learn
is summarization. Summarization can be defined as finding the
most
important information from a reading. To effectively summarize a
text,
students must follow several rules including identify main information,
delete
trivial and redundant information, and relate main and supporting ideas. In this
lesson, I will teach the students story mapping as a way of
learning to summarize so that they may improve their reading
comprehension.
II.Materials: multiple
copies of Jeff Brown’s Flat
Stanley, five large sheets of
butcher paper, markers
III.
Procedures:
1. I
will pre-assign the book Flat Stanley, by Jeff Brown, to the
entire
class at
least a week in advance to this
lesson.
2.
I will start of by telling the children how
important it is to understand what they read. I will tell them
that there
is an easy way to help them accomplish this task called a story map.
3. On
the day the reading
is to be finished, I will ask the students to take out their books.
4. Now that everyone has completed
the book Flat Stanley, we are going to write a
summary. A
summary is a paragraph or two that is written in your
own words. It
should be a shortened version of what happened in the story.
Writing
summaries can help you to remember what you have read, and it can
be a lot
of fun.
5. I want everyone to skim
chapter. As you skim and freshen your
memory, write down some words or ideas that you think explain the
plot of
the story.
6. When they are finished
I will begin discussing story mapping. We are
going to make a story map to help us write our summaries.
(I will hang a piece of the butcher paper on the
chalkboard. I will
write on it with a marker.) First, I will draw a big circle
in the
middle of my paper. Inside the circle I will write “chapter
one”. What some of the words and
ideas you wrote down? Each time I write one of your words or
ideas,
I will draw a small circle around it. Then I will draw a line to
connect
it to our big Chapter One circle.
7.
As a class we will
complete the story map. Now,
that we have finished our story map, we are going to write
a
summary. Our summary only needs to be one paragraph long, which
is three
to five complete sentences.
8. Together as a class
we will discuss their
ideas and condense them into a short paragraph summarizing the
first
chapter. I will write the paragraph on the butcher paper
large
enough for everyone to see it. Then I will split the students
into four
groups of four.
9. We
have four groups of students in our classroom. There are four
more chapters
in Flat Stanley.
Each group will be responsible for one
chapter. Everyone will skim his or her chapter
silently. When
everyone in your group is finished, raise your hand and I will
bring you a
piece of butcher paper and markers. As a group, you will
make your
own story web and write a summary of your chapter at the bottom
of the
page.
10. When everyone
is finished, each group
will come up and present their story map and summary of their
chapter.
IV.
Assessment: I will use
their summaries,
story maps, and presentations to assess the students’ understanding and
comprehension of Flat Stanley.
V.
References:
1.Brown Jeff. Flat
2.Katie
Burns. Putting It All Together With Summarization.
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/explor/burnsrl.html
3.Terri Swindall.
Learning to Summarize. http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/inroads/swindallrl.html