Summarizing
Puts the Pieces
Together
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.
Materials:
Multiple
copies of Jeff
Brown’s Flat Stanley
Five large
sheets of
butcher paper
Markers
Procedures:
1. I will
pre-assign
the book Flat
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 refresh 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
storymap, 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 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.”
Assessment: I will use their
summaries, story maps, and presentations to assess the students’
understanding
and comprehension of Flat Stanley.
References:
1.Brown
Jeff. Flat