Rationale:
As students
begin to
emerge as fluent readers, they must be able to remember the important
information that they read. A single reading of material does not often
enable students
recall all of the information that they read. However, mature readers
experience little difficulty recalling the important main ideas of the
material.
Materials:
Copies of National Geographic for Kids: “When
Lightning Strikes” article, paper, pencil, chalkboard, chalk
Procedures:
1)
Ask
students: “Who has ever read something but remembered everything that
you read
and had to look back over it?” “Today we are going to talk about
summarization.
Summarization is being able to explain what you read in a few
sentences, and it
makes what you read a lot easier to remember and explain.”
2)
Pass
out copies of the article “When Lightning Strikes” to each student.
Instructions for students: “Now I want each of you to silently read
this
article. If there is a word that you cannot read raise your hand and I
will
help you. Do not try to remember every fact in the article, but try to
remember
some of the ideas that you think are important.”
3)
On
the board draw an outline. “Now this is an outline and we are going to
summarize
the article that you just read. Who can tell me the title of the
article? Okay
the title goes here at the top. Who knows what the subheadings are? The
subheadings are written below the title. Not every article has
subheadings, but
most of them do.
4)
Assessment:
“Now I want everyone to take out a piece of paper and pencil and write
a brief one
paragraph summary of the article that you just read. Remember to write
only the
important facts.” Students summaries will be assessed
based on the information that they provided.
References:
Pressley, M.,
Johnson, C. J., Symons, S., McGoldrick, J. A., & Kurity, J. A.
(1989).
Strategies that improve children's memory and comprehension of text.
The
Elementary School Journal, 90, 3-32.
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