Reading to Learn Lesson Design
Stefanie Berryhill
Summarizing
is Fun
with Flat Stanley!
Reading to Learn Lesson Design
Stefanie
Berryhill
I.
Rationale: Summarization is very important to
comprehension. The purpose of reading is to comprehend what has
been
read. In this lesson, I will teach the students story mapping as
a way of
learning to summarize so that they may improve their reading
comprehension.
II. Materials: multiple copies of Jeff Brown’s Flat Stanley, five large sheets of butcher paper, markers
III.
Procedures:
1. I
will pre-assign the book Flat Stanley, by
Jeff Brown, to the entire class at
least a
week in advance to this lesson.
2.
On the day
the reading is to be finished, I will ask the students to take out
their books.
3. Now
that everyone has completed the book Flat
Stanley, we are going to write a summary.
A summary is a paragraph or two that is written in your own words. It should be a shortened version of what
happened in the story. Writing summaries can help you
to remember
what you have read, and it can be a lot of fun.
4.
I want everyone to skim chapter. As
you skim and freshen your memory, write down some words or ideas
that you
think explain the plot of the story.
5.
When they are finished I will begin discussing story mapping. We are going to make a story map to
help us write our summaries. (I will hang a piece of
the
butcher paper on the chalkboard. I will write on it with a
marker.)
First, I will draw a big circle in the middle of my paper.
Inside
the circle I will write “chapter one”. What
some of the words and ideas you wrote down? Each time I
write one of your words or ideas, I will draw a small circle around it. Then I will draw a line to connect it to our
big Chapter One circle.
6.
As a class
we will complete the story map. Now,
that we have finished our story map, we are going to write
a
summary. Our summary only needs to be one paragraph long, which
is three
to five complete sentences.
7.
Together
as a class we
will discuss their ideas and condense them into a short paragraph
summarizing the first chapter. I will write the paragraph on the
butcher paper large enough for everyone to see it. Then I
will split
the students into four groups of four.
8.
We
have four groups of students in our
classroom. There are four
more chapters in Flat
9.
When everyone
is finished, each group will
come up and present their story map and summary of their
chapter.
IV. Assessment: I will use their summaries, story maps, and presentations to assess the students’ understanding and comprehension of Flat Stanley.
V.
References:
Brown Jeff. Flat
Swindall,
Tamra. “Learning to Summarize”.
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/inroads/swindallrl.html.
Tomlinson,
Lindsey. “Comprehension in the Cold”.
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/inroads/tomlinsonrl.html.
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