Becoming Skilled Summarizers!
Reading to Learn
Rationale:
As students grow older and become more experienced with reading, they gain
knowledge of helpful strategies. The most important goal of reading is
comprehension, and one strategy that allows one to reach this goal is
summarization.
Materials:
-Copy of the article, Loggerhead Sea Turtles, for each student
-Pencil for each child
-Highlighter for each student
-Paper for each student
-Assessment checklist for each child (below)
-Loggerhead Sea Turtles article for the teacher to put on the overhead or
document camera
-Overhead projector
-Overhead marker
Procedures:
1.) Start this lesson by asking the class who remembers what fluency is/what
fluency means. Right! Fluency is being able to read quickly, smoothly, and with
expression. Today we’re going to learn a new concept called summarization. With
this new concept, we still need to remember to read fluently.
2.) Does anyone know what summarization is? (Let students respond).
Summarization is putting together all the important information from an article,
text, or passage. We summarize things to make it easier to understand, and we
delete information that is not helpful.
3.) When we summarize, the first thing we must do is delete any information that
isn’t important or helpful. We do this so that we can find the facts that are
most important, and delete the ones that don’t help us to understand the main
point of the article. Second, we will reread the parts that we found to be
important and make sure that there weren’t any important details that we missed.
Third, we put our points together and compose a statement that covers everything
the author is saying about the article, passage, or text. Does everyone
understand? What are we going to do first? Second? Third?
4.) Okay class, you are all now ready to become skilled summarizers! To become
skilled summarizers, you all must remember to follow the three steps we just
talked about. Today we are going to read about Loggerhead sea turtles. This
article will tell us all different facts about these turtles from how they got
their name, what they eat, and how many eggs they lay. How many eggs do you
think they lay? We’ll have to read the rest to find out!
5.) Once the article has been read aloud by the class, I will reread the first paragraph and show the students how to summarize it. Then, I will tell students that I want them to watch and see how I choose the most important parts of the passage.
-These beautifully colored sea turtles got their name because
their oversized head
sort of looks
like a big log. Within their heads are
powerful jaws,
which loggerheads use for crushing prey like conchs, horseshoe crabs, and
other animals with
hard shells. They also eat softer foods like
jellyfish, fish, seaweed,
and a brown algae
called sargassum.
6.)
The first two sentences are just a trigger sentence getting the reader
interested in the article. The
words/phrases that I find and think are the most important from this paragraph,
I’m going to highlight them. All of the others words leftover I’m going to cross
out. In the first sentence, oversized head and looks like a big log are
important because they are explaining why the Loggerhead sea turtle is called
Loggerhead. In the second sentence, I’m going to highlight powerful jaws and
prey like conchs, horseshoe crabs, and other animals with hard shells because
it’s talking about how the Loggerhead uses its powerful jaws to eat animals with
hard shells. In the last sentence, I’m going to highlight jellyfish, fish,
seaweed, and brown algae called saragassum because these are things the
Loggerhead turtle eats.
7.) Okay, so I am left with oversized head, looks like a big log, powerful jaws,
prey like conchs, horseshoe crabs, and other animals with hard shells, and
jellyfish, fish, seaweed, and brown algae called sargassum. Does everyone agree
that these facts are important? So what do we do next? We need to sum up our
facts and write our topic sentence. Loggerhead sea turtles get their name from
their oversized head that looks like a log, and they use their powerful jaws to
crush animals with hard shells, while also eating jellyfish, fish, seaweed, and
a brown algae called sargassum. How does this sentence sound? Did I get all of
the important facts? Let’s write this sentence on our papers.
8.)
Now I want you all to practice summarizing the rest of the article on your own.
The three steps are on the board if you get stuck and need help. You will
be working on this on your own. When you think you have all of the important
information, write your topic sentence and your summary.
9.) When most of the class has completed the assignment, I will begin to call
students one at a time to my desk and have them read their summaries to me.
I will go through the assessment checklist while the students read their
summary. When they are finished, I
will go over how they did/what they need to fix.
References:
The Reading Genie. Ally Johnson. “Super Summarizers.”
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invitations/johnsonrl.htm
National Geographic Kids. Catherine D. Hughes.
Loggerhead Sea Turtles.
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/creaturefeature/loggerhead/
Assessment Checklist:
Students Name: _______________________________________
Date: ___________________
Yes No
_____ _____
Picked out the most important information
_____ _____
Deleted unnecessary information
_____ _____
Understood the information from the text/article/passage
_____ _____
Wrote a sentence(s) summarizing the most important parts of text