Summarization Super Stars
By Angela
Simpson
Reading To Learn
Rationale: People have
to comprehend
information that they read in order to recall it; therefore
comprehension is
the ultimate goal of reading instruction. Comprehension is complicated
and
requires practice, yet there are various strategies that can be used to
gain
meaning and knowledge from a text. One strategy is summarization.
Summarization is a key strategy that fluent readers use in order to
understand
text. Children need direct instruction in how to appropriately
summarize
material from an expository text. By implementing these skills students
will be
better prepared to recall and discuss information from an assigned
reading. In this lesson, students will learn the six steps of
summarization which will allow them to summarize what they are reading.
This
will ultimately give children a better understanding of the text.
Materials:
Paper
Pencil
Marker board
Markers
A bookmark for each student with the 6 summarization steps on it
Summarization steps:
1. Pick out important details that are necessary to the story.
2. Pick out the less important ideas from the passage and delete
them.
3. Pick out the repeated ideas from the passage and delete
them.
4. Highlight the important and necessary details using key words.
5. Pick a topic sentence
6. Invent a topic sentence if there is none.
Copy of Space
Rock Makes a
Crash Landing, National Geographic Kids News
for each student.
Procedures:
1. Good Morning boys and girls, today we are
going to learn about something we each do each and every day,
comprehension.
Does anyone know what comprehension means? The reason that we
learn to
read is so that we can comprehend, or understand, the information given
in
whatever we are reading. When we comprehend information, we are
able to
remember what we are reading and are able to remember even after we
have read.
So, today we are going to learn some steps that will help us comprehend
what we
read. I am going to teach you a
new trick to be able to comprehend more information, the trick is
summarization. When we summarize we decide which information in the
story or
writing is important for understanding. Today we are going to
practice
summarizing by reading through the story and picking out the main idea
and the
most important details, and forgetting about the things that do not go
along
with the main idea.
2. The
teacher will
now explain summarization. The six rules will already be written on the
board
so that the teacher can refer to them as needed. The first
step is to pick out important details that we think are
necessary to the story. The second step is to pick out the less
important
ideas and take them away. The third step is to pick out ideas
that are
repeated and take them away. The fourth step is to highlight the
important details using key words. For the fifth step we pick a
topic
sentence. And our last step is to invent a topic sentence if we
do not
have one. I am going to pass out bookmarks to each of you that
have these
steps on them so you will not forget our 6 steps of
summarization. You can
use these whenever you need a little help.
3. Okay guys, now that we have talked about comprehension
and summarization, we are going to read something and see if we can use
our new
trick. Before I pass out the article, I'm going to tell you a
little bit
about it. We are going to read a passage about something very
unusual
that happened. A New Zealand couple had a surprise visitor in
turned
their world upside down. So if you want to find about more about
this
surprise visitor, you'll need to read on. So, read the first
paragraph
SILENTLY to yourselves. This will let everyone focus on what they
are
reading. While you are reading, make sure to get enough information to
summarize the paragraph. When summarizing, remember that it is very
important
to make sure you separate the important details from the ones that are
not so
important.
4. The
teacher will
model for the class using the 6 steps of summarization for the class.
The
teacher will use the first paragraph to make sure the students
understand all
of the steps. After reading through the
first paragraph, these are the main points that I came up
with. 1) The
house was in New Zealand. 2) A grapefruit meteorite crashed
through a
roof. Did anyone get anything different? As I go on through the
story,
I am going to use all of our steps. I just did our first step and
picked
out what I thought were the important details. The next step is
to pick
out the less important points from the paragraph. I think these
would be:
1) The meteorite slammed into a couch. 2) Hit the
ceiling. 3) It rolled under a table. Did anyone get
something
different? What is the next step? Correct, take away any
repeated information.
Did anyone see anything that was already there? OK, then we will
move onto
the next step- highlight some keywords. I thought that the
keywords were grapefruit
sized, meteorite,
roof, and New Zealand. Where there any other words that
anyone came
up with? What do I need to do now? Right! I need a topic
sentence. The topic sentence I came up with is A grapefruit sized
meteorite crashed through the roof of a house in New Zealand. Did
anybody
get something else? Great Job Guys, you really are being
Summarization
Super Stars! Since we just came up with our topic sentence, we do
not need
to do step 6 because that step is inventing a topic sentence. The
teacher
will make sure all of the steps are written on the board so the
students can
use it.
5. The
teacher will
make sure all of the children understand the goal of summarization and
how to
do it. Does everyone feel good with
summarizing now? Great! Now that anyone knows what is going
on, I
want everyone to read the rest of the article and use the 6 steps to
summarize
it. If you need any help you can look on the board or at your bookmarks.
6. The
children will
read the article to their selves silently and then they will summarize
the
article on their own. Now that we are
finished reading, please take out your paper and pencil and summarize
the
article. Do not forget to list the important details and to separate
the less
important details. Remove any repeated information. Then,
make sure
to list your keywords that you create from the important details.
Last,
use your keywords and your main points to pick your topic sentence, or
use them
to form your own topic sentence. If you have any questions,
please raise
your hand and I will come and help you.
Assessment: The
teacher will
use the students summarizations to see how they understood the concept.
The
teacher will use a list of the six summarization steps and check yes if
they
followed the rule and no if they did not. Also, the entire time
they are
working on their summarizations, I will walk around to make sure that
they are
following the steps written on the board and on their bookmarks.
References: