Simon Says Summarize!
Reading to Learn
By:
Caroline Burr
Rationale:
Comprehension is one of the ultimate goals in reading. It is important
for children to learn specific tools that will assist their comprehension early
on in reading education. Summarization is an important skill for children to
learn in order to gain knowledge and meaning of assigned text. Summarization is
the child's ability to erase insignificant details, pick out main ideas, and
create a sentence that contains the meaning the author has conveyed through
text. After this lesson, students will have obtained the necessary skills to
construct summaries, and they will be better equipped to interpret information
and meanings from assigned readings.
Materials:
-Summarizing Poster:
1. Delete anything that you know
is not important to the story.
2. Pick out the items and events that you know are important
3. Compose a sentence that covers the main ideas of the readings and the
purpose of the story.
-Amazing Bats at Bracken Cave Article (class set)
- Green Invaders Article (teacher copy/ overhead or smart board copy)
-Assessment checklist
YES
NO
-Deletes details
-Identifies important items and main ideas
-Creates a sentence that covers the important information the author
Included in the story.
Procedure:
1.
I am going to begin the lesson by explaining why
it is important for us to learn how to summarize literature works and articles
when we read. I will then go to explain to the students what summarizing
entails. "Summarizing is when you read informational texts and pull out the
important ideas the author has written about, and retell the story in your own
words so someone could get an overview of the story without having to read it
themselves."
2.
Before we read our informational texts, I am
going to explain to you the difference between a detail and a main idea. A
detail is something that is important to the story but not important when we
want to summarize. When we summarize we want to take the important facts from
the story to create a statement or paragraph. Details explain stories better and
are included so we can better visualize what the author is talking to us about.
The main idea of an article, is the main purpose for why the author wrote the
article. It is something that allows us to see the big picture of the text,
without having to learn every single detail of the story.
3.
"Now we
are going to read an article together as a class and create a summarizing
sentence together. (Put Green Invaders article on the overhead or smart board).
I want each of you to follow along with the article while I read it aloud. I
want you to think about these questions while I am reading: Why did the author
write this story? Who is the author writing about? What is the main idea that
the author would like me to take away from this story?
4.
Now that we have all read this article we are
going to look at the summarizing poster hanging in our classroom to help us
create a summarizing sentence. Make a list on the board that names the main
points of the article. Now that we have deleted the unimportant information and
made a list of the main ideas, lets brainstorm different sentences that best
summarize the article. Let the children say different sentences that they think
best summarizes the article and write them on the smart board. Discuss which
sentence best summarizes the article, and scaffold the students towards the
important information if they are getting confused.
5.
"Now I am going to give each of you a copy of the
article Amazing Bats at Bracken Cave to read silently. I am also going to give
each of you a highlighter to highlight the important information that you find
in the article. After you have finished reading the article, I want you to use
the summarizing poster as a guide and create your own sentence to summarize the
article. When you have finished writing your sentence please raise your hand and
wait patiently until I call you to come to my table to check your work."
6.
I will assess the students' work by using the
assessment checklist posted above.
References:
Fox, Catherine
Clarke, Green Invaders
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/spacescience/invasive-plants/
Tuttle, Merlin D.,
Bats At Bracken Cave
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/bat-cave/
White, Amy, Fly High
And Summarize
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/odysseys/whiterl.html