A Few Steps, Sum it UP!
Reading
to Learn
By:
Jessica Parker
Rationale: As
children reach the late elementary school years, comprehending what
they read
becomes greatly important. Students are expected to remember
information that
they read, so they can analyze and explore written text. In order
for
children to be able to recall the main points from written text,
they must be
able to summarize the information. However, until students are
provided
instruction on how to construct summaries, this is very difficult for
them. By teaching children how to delete trivial and redundant
information, superordinate items and events, and either find or create
a topic
sentence that covers the main idea of the story, we can help children
to better
remember information that they read.
Materials:
Copies of National Geographic Online’s Lemurs
for each student. This article can be found at:
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngexplorer/0510/articles/mainarticle.html
Paper for each student
Pencils
Chalkboard/dry erase board
Chalk/dry erase maker
Procedures:
1.) Begin
lesson by reviewing what students do when
reading silently. “Today boys
and girls, we are going to be doing some silent
reading. Does everyone remember doing silent reading? Good, I’m
glad to
see we remember. Today before we start, I want us to spend a little
time reviewing
how we read silently. Let’s start our review by me showing you
how to
read silently.” Model how to read silently for the
children.
Over-dramatize your eyes moving from word to word. You can go as
far as
making motions with your mouth like you are reading.
Make sure not to say anything aloud. After
you have read for a couple of minutes, stop and ask the students, “Can anyone tell me what some important
rules are when we read silently? That’s right! Let’s make a list of our
rules
on the board.” Continue by letting
students
suggest rules. Make sure students stay on track and are remembering the
rules.
“Wow! We have a great list here on the
board! You all did a super job!”
2.)Transition
to
introducing today’s lesson by explaining what it means to summarize
what
we read. “Today we are going to
talk about how important it is to understand what we read. If we
read
something and we don’t understand it, does that help us? No, it
doesn’t. We want to always make sure we
understand what
we are reading. A good way for us to
understand something that we read is to summarize the text
after we read
it. Has anyone ever heard the word summarize? To summarize a story means to pick out
the main idea of a story. The main idea
is what the story is about. By picking
out the main idea, we can remember and understand the information
easier.
Sometimes stories have a lot of information in them, and only some of
that information—the
most important details—help us to understand the story. Today we
are
going to learn some rules to help us summarize a story.”
- Delete information that is
not important or is
repeated.
- If there are
lists of items
or events, think of one
main heading or word for this information, instead of listing each item
or
event.
- Find a topic
sentence that covers the main
idea of
the story, and if there is not a topic
sentence, create one.”
5.)
Once
everyone
has finished reading, get students’ attention and move on to the story
map. “Ok, everyone should have gotten a chance to
read and discuss the article with someone. Now we’re going to make a
summary map
to help us summarize the article. When we make a summary map, we
put the
main topic or idea, in a circle in the middle of our paper. Can anyone tell me where we can find the main
idea? That’s right, we can usually find
it in the first paragraph. Who can tell me what the topic of our
article
is? That’s right again, you are such smart students!
Our main idea is lemurs! So we want to
write the word lemurs in our topic circle.” Model on the
board.
6.) “Now that we
know our topic, we will draw antennas from our main circle to describe
different important facts that the article told us about.
Remember,
though, that when we are thinking of these details, our rules tell us
that we
don’t need to include information that is not important. So, if I
was
thinking of a detail to include, I might include Lemurs live in only one place in the wild..
Add this detail to the summary map on the board. Question
students for one or two more details
to include and write them on the board also. “Can anyone
give me an example of something that we would not include
because it is unimportant?”
7.) Have
students finish the summary map on their
own. Remind them to refer back to the
rules that are listed on the board. Instruct
students to come up with a topic sentence for the article. “After
you have completed your summary map
and have your topic sentence, it should be easy to write a summary. I want everyone to write a summary of the
article that they could use to tell a classmate that didn’t read the
article,
what the article was about.”
Assessment: I
will assess students work by taking up their
completed summaries and evaluating how well the seemed to grasp the
concept, making
sure that they deleted unimportant information, used main headings, and
had a
topic sentence.
References:
Rene
Ebersole. Lemurs.
National Geographic News Online
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngexplorer/0510/articles/mainarticle.html
Pressley, M.,
Johnson, C. J.,
Symons, S., McGoldrick, J. A., and Kurita,
J.A. (1989).
Strategies that Improve Children’s Memory and
Comprehension of Text. The Elementary School Journal.
90(1), 3-32.
Wheeler,
Emily. To Sum it all Up…
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/guides/wheelerrl.html
McClanahan, Hope. What Was THAT All About?
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/explor/mcclanahanrl.html
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