SumBody Special

Reading to Learn Design

Rationale:

To be a skillful reader, one must be able to comprehend text.  An effective way strategy in learning to comprehend is summarizing (Pressley et.al)  There are three important rules to summarizing: 1. delete trivial information and redundancies, 2. superordinate items and events, and 3. find or compose a statement that covers everything the writer is saying about the topic.  In this lesson, students will learn to summarize using these rules, which will strengthen their comprehension skills.   

 Materials:

Text: Time for Kids “Turning the Tide for Turtles”  http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/wr/article/0,17585,749782,00.html

(one copy per student)

Text: Time for Kids “He is Bear-y Generous.”

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/wr/article/0,17585,439167,00.html

(copy for the teacher)

Text: Time for Kids “Young Sailor has a Whale of a Tale.”

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/wr/article/0,17585,409821,00.html

(one copy per student)

Chart with sentence “Annie leaped over the fence and ran into the pond.”

Highlighter (one per student)

Paper (one per student)

Pencil (one per student)

Checklist with the rules: 1. delete trivial information and redundancies, 2. superordinate items and events, and 3. find or compose a statement that covers everything the writer is saying about the topic. (one per student)

Chalkboard

Chalk

 Procedures:

1.Introduce the lesson to the students by explaining how important comprehension is.  “The most important thing we do when we read is understand what we are reading.  Understanding what we read is called comprehension.  Comprehension is our goal for reading.  One way to help us comprehend is by summarizing.  Today we will be summarizing to help us understand what we read.” 

2.“I am going to read a sentence from the chart in two different ways.” First read the sentence aloud and then read it silently to model silent reading.  “We have talked about reading silently to ourselves.  When we read silently we hear the information, but people around us don’t hear what we are reading.” Read “Annie leaped over the fence and ran into the pond” aloud.  Read it again, but read it silently.  “Did you notice the difference?  We are going to read in class today the way I read the sentence the second time, silently.”

3.“There are three rules we have to learn when we summarize.  When we read summarize a text we need to 1. delete trivial information and redundancies, 2. superordinate items and events, and 3. find or compose a statement that covers everything the writer is saying about the topic.”  Explain each of these rules and difficult terminology (trivial and superordinate).  “If there is information that you see more than one time, you need to delete it.  You also need to combine the ideas of the reading to make a main idea.  I will give you an example in the next section.”  

4.Model summarization.  “I am going to show you how to use these rules to summarize a paragraph.” Read the paragraph “He is Bear-y Generous.”

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/wr/article/0,17585,439167,00.html

“First, I am going to remove any unimportant information or repeated information.  It is not really important that we know that J.J has been selling bears since he was 13 or that he has designed a legacy bear.  Now, I am going to note the important information.  For example, J.J.’s profits for selling the bears will be used for college scholarships, hopefully starting next year.  Now, I am going to find a topic sentence. J.J. Neulist has been selling bears on the internet to create a scholarship to honor children who died in the September 11^th plane crashes.” 

5.“Now I am going to give you a paragraph to summarize.  I want you to read it silently and then we will summarize the paragraph as a class.”  Read “Young Sailor has a Whale of a Tale.”

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/wr/article/0,17585,409821,00.html

After students are finished reading the class will work together and come up with a summary using the three rules.  We will write the summary on the board. 

6.Give each student a copy of “Turning the Tide for Turtles”  http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/wr/article/0,17585,749782,00.html.  “I am going to give everyone a copy of the article “Turning the Tide for Turtles.”  This article is about the enormous sea turtles that lay their eggs on a beach in Mexico.  These turtles are in much danger and need to be saved.  Let’s read to see if we can help save the sea turtles.  Now, I am going to give everyone a highlighter.  Please get out a piece of paper and a pencil.  I want to you mark through the unimportant information with your pencil and highlight the important information with your highlighter.  Write your summary on the piece of paper.  I am also going to hand out a checklist with our summary rules.  As you create your summary, I want you to check off the rules that you have followed on your checklist.     

7.For the assessment, I will collect the students’ checklists and summaries of the article to see how well they understand summarizing.  I will evaluate their summaries based on the summary rules.     

Reference:

Fleming, Nell. 1,2,3…A Summary!. “Reading to Learn.” Reading Genie Website.

http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/connect/flemingrl.html

          
Pressley, Michael, et. al. “Strategies That Improve Children’s Memory and

Comprehension of Text.” The Elementary School Journal. The University of Chicago, 1989.

 
Satterfield, Kathyrn. (2004). Time for Kids “Turning the Tide for Turtles” 

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/wr/article/0,17585,749782,00.html

 
Time for Kids. (2003). “He is Bear-y Generous.”

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/wr/article/0,17585,439167,00.html

 
Time for Kids. (2003).  “Young Sailor has a Whale of a Tale.”

http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/class/wr/article/0,17585,409821,00.html