What was THAT all About???
Reading to
Learn
RATIONALE:
Comprehension is
the goal of reading! A great strategy for students to learn when trying
to
comprehend a text is summarization. In this lesson students will learn
to
identify important and less important details of a text when creating a
summary.
MATERIALS:
Highlighters for
each child
Black markers for
each child
Copies of Team
Rescues History from Hurricane Damage. Catherine Clarke Fox. National Geographic
Kids News.
PROCEDURES:
1. Today we are
going to read a text and learn
how to create a summary of what we have read. When you create a summary
you
find the meaningful and important parts of what you read and put them
together
to make a shorter text than the original. Summaries can help up tell a
friend
the information in a quick way. It also helps with comprehension.
2. Remember how we
talked about reading
silently. When reading silently remember, your lips will not be moving
and
there will not be sound coming out of your mouth. Let me show you by
reading
the first sentence of this paragraph on the board aloud and then
silently
(Have the paragraph already written). Read aloud “When I
woke up this morning it was snowing outside.” Then read it
silently. Now as I read the whole
paragraph aloud, I want you to follow along with me reading silently
like you
just practiced. “When I woke up this morning it was snowing outside. I
put on
my snow coat. The coat is blue. It put mittens on too. I will stay
warm!”
3. Now let’s go
through and highlight some
important things in this paragraph. What is the most important thing in
this
paragraph? That’s right, it is snowing and so they put on a snow coat.
Snow is
an important word so I am going to highlight it. The rest of the
sentence is
not as important so I am going to cross it out. We can also highlight
the color
of the coat and the word mittens because they are important. The rest
of the
sentences are not important. Finally, staying warm is important so I
will
highlight that and cross out the rest. Now I have all of the important
parts
highlighted. I can easily remember the paragraph’s main idea, so let’s
take the
highlighted part and make a summary. Let students help you come up
with a
summary of the paragraph using the highlighted parts and omitting the
unimportant parts. (Ex. I put on my snow coat and mittens to stay warm
because
it was snowing.)
4. When we
summarize text there are three
rules that can help us. We used them a minute ago when we summarized
the
paragraph on the board. (Write on
the board as you say them). They are: 1)
Get rid of any unnecessary or repeated information 2) pick out the most
important items or events 3) write a statement that covers everything
the
author is trying to say about the topic.
5. Let’s practice
the first paragraph all
together. It says “The National Park Service's Jean Lafitte National
Historic Park
and Preserve's Visitor Center in New Orleans was broiling at about
a
hundred degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), and moisture in the
air made
it seem even hotter for emergency workers cleaning up there after
Hurricane
Katrina.” I want each of you to highlight the important parts and cross
out the
unnecessary parts. (Hopefully, they will highlight National Park
Services,
6. Now that I have
shown you how to summarize
and we have done some simple practice it is your turn to summarize on
your own.
This is an article from National Geographic for Kids about rescuing
important
parts of history from the damage from Hurricane Katrina. As you are
silently reading
this article use your three summarizing rules to help you comprehend
the text.
You can also use your highlighter to highlight important information
and a
black marker to cross out unnecessary information.
7. After students
have read they will get into partners and summarize each paragraph of
the
article into one sentence.
8. For assessment
I will collect the summarizations the students did from the article and
check
the using the following checklist.
- Is redundant information left out of
the summary?
- Are important ideas and events
included in the summary?
- Do they state the author’s main idea
and supporting details?
RESOURCES
Nell Fleming,
Team Rescues History from
Hurricane Damage.
Catherine
Clarke Fox. National Geographic Kids News.
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