"What's
the point?"
Reading
to Learn
Rationale: As
children become better readers it is
central for them to understand how to gain meaning and to understand
what the
story is about. Beginning readers are focused on pronunciation and
understanding what a word means that assists in helping them to
comprehend what
the story is about. Comprehension is developed through practicing
reading. It
is important that students become comfortable with reading and gain
skill in
areas such as decoding in order for better comprehension. Skills to
comprehend
can be taught by modeling and practice. Another successful way for
comprehension is to use the summarization strategy, through summarizing
students can gain a better understanding of what was read.
Materials:
-chart
paper
-markers,
pencils, paper
-copies
of short children's article: "How do
animals spend the winter?" By: Science Made Simple.
http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/animals.html
Procedure:
1.
I will begin by explaining to the students that
they are going to do an activity that will help them pick out the
important
parts of stories that they read. I will ask, "Can anyone tell me what
the
word summarize means?", "Why is summarizing important when we read?"
I will explain that summarizing is a strategy that will help them to
understand
what happened in what they read. I will let them know it takes a lot of
practice, and I will also model reading a paragraph from the article
that we
are reading, and model how to summarize what they just heard.
2.
I will then read the paragraph, and using the
chart paper I will discuss and write the important facts that we should
pull
from the story to create a summary of what we just heard. Interactive
writing
will take place by me discussing what my thought process is on the
chart paper
while summarizing the paragraph from the article. I will explain my
thought
process aloud so the students can ask questions, and understand
thoroughly how
to summarize what they have read on their own. For example, "What do
you
think was the most important parts from what I just read?", "What is
not very important, that we don't need to remember from the paragraph?"
This will help the students to understand how to take out the important
facts
from the reading. Here is an example from the article:
Questions:
What is the main idea from this paragraph? What does is it mean to
migrate?
3.
After I have modeled for the students how to
summarize, I will hand out the article for each of them to read. Each
student
will have a pencil and paper. I will have them read the article several
times
to make sure they understood what they read. I will begin by having a
whole
group reading. I will then have them get into pairs to read to one
another.
Then they will read the article to themselves. They will then pick out
the
important information from the article and record it on paper. They
will then
get back into their pairs and discuss their findings. I want the
students to
also discuss the strategies they used to summarize the article. I
believe it
will be effective for the students to work in pairs and guide each
other for a
better understanding of summarization.
4.
After everyone has finished, we will meet as a
whole group and complete our chart on the important facts from the
article. We will
then have a completed summary of the article, and hopefully the
students will
have a better understanding of summarizing to help with future reading.
Assessment: The students could be
assessed by taking a
quiz on the important facts from the article that was read.
References:
-"How
do animals spend the winter?" By:
Science Made Simple. http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/animals.html
-Murray,
Dr. Bruce http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/persp/sirotarl.html