Sum It Up!
By: Sharon
Scyphers
Rationale: Comprehension
is an important goal for
students as they learn how to read. It can often be difficult to teach
a
student how to comprehend materials, but it is necessary for a student
to
comprehend the material in order to explore and understand texts.
Teaching
students to summarize as they read is a very effective method that
students can
use to ensure comprehension while reading. Summarizing is best taught
in steps.
Deleting trivial and redundant information will allow the student to
focus on
the important details. Students should also substitute easy terms for
lists of
items, as well as exchanging a series of events with one action term.
It is
also very helpful for the student to either find the topic sentence
that covers
the main idea of the story or create a meaningful topic sentence.
Following
these steps will develop a child's ability to comprehend and recall
information
read.
Materials:
Procedures:
1. Begin the lesson by
reviewing how
to read silently to ensure all students understand how and why to read
silently. "Can anyone tell me what we do
when we read silently? Very good! It is when we read the words but we
do not
say anything with our mouths. Only our brain can hear us! Who can tell
me why
we read silently? Good answer! We read silently to help us understand
and
remember all of the good details from the text. Today we are going to
practice
reading silently, but we are going to work on summarizing what we have
read as
we work through the text."
2. Introduce the students the
lesson
by explaining what it means to summarize and the steps it takes to form
a
summary. "Today we are going to talk
about why it is so important to understand what we read and we are
going to
learn ways we can be sure we understand it. If we read something and do
not
understand what it says have we learned anything? No! When we summarize
what we
have just read, we can be sure that we understood the text. Does anyone
know
what the word summarize means? It means to tell what the main idea of
the story
was. There are steps we can take to understand and summarize the story
better!"
3. Teach the students the
steps we
follow to correctly summarize a selected text. "There are three easy
steps we can follow to summarize what we have
read. First, we can throw away all of the unimportant and repetitive
information. We do not need all of those messy details to confuse us!
Next we
can think of a main heading or action word to take the place of a long
list of
items or events. Finally, we need to find or make up a topic sentence
that
tells the main idea of the story! If we follow these steps every time
we will
be able to summarize the story and retell it just as if it was your
own!"
4. Next, provide each student
with a
copy of The Dragon Hunter. "To practice
summarizing we are going to
read this article titled The Dragon
Hunter and summarize it using the steps we have learned. After you
have
read the article silently begin discussing the main topic of the
article with a
partner. Begin to delete the excess information and choose only
relevant
thoughts. After everyone is finished we will compare everyone䴜s ideas
and come
up with a class summary of the article."
5. Once all silently reading
is
complete begin the class discussion. "Ok
now we are going to write out our ideas about the story to form a story
map. We
need to put the main idea in a circle in the middle like a web. Who
thinks they
know what the main idea might be? (Take suggestions and draw a
conclusion of
the main idea) That䴜s exactly right! The main idea of the article is
dragon
flies." Draw the story map on the board as the student copy on
their own
paper.
6. Model and explain to the
students
how to find important information from the article. "Since
we know the main topic, now we need to add bubbles to the main
idea with important information that completes the story. Remember we
only want
important information. One important fact I found was there
are 5,500 different types of dragon flies. Do you all agree
that this should go in a bubble around the main topic? Good. Now can
one of you
give me another idea that we should add to the map.
(Add a few more ideas of important info to
the board)."
7. Allow the students to complete the story map
independently.
Tell the students to create a topic sentence about the main idea. "After you have completed your story map,
it should be easy to put the thoughts into sentences and construct a
summary of
the article. I want each of you to take your map and create a summary
of the
article. The summary should tell what the article was about, and
someone who
hasn䴜t read the article should still understand what it is about."
Assessment:
I will use the summaries that
the students create independently to assess
their comprehension and summarization skills learned throughout the
lesson. I
will check their work to be sure each student is applying the
knowledge,
deleting important information, identifying main ideas, and
constructing a
topic sentence.
Parker, Lauren ,
Summarizing. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invent/parkerrl.html
(2005)
Wilson, Keith. The Dragon
Hunters. National Geographic: 2005.