Simply Summarize
By: Katherine McCartha
Rationale: What students learn
through reading material is based on what is
comprehended. It is difficult to grasp the concept of a text without
being able
to focus on the main point and mentally deleting unnecessary
information. The
process of gathering the main idea is summarization. This lesson is on
teaching
students how to summarize a text.
Materials: pencils,
highlighters, teacher checklist, a printed copy of Porky
Pets by Sharon Thompson National Geographic Kids Magazine, a printed
copy of
Are Plastic Bags Harming the Environment? Reported by John Roach and
written by
Sara Ives National Geographic Kids News/ from: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngkids
I will begin the lesson with a review over how to read silently. This
is
because summarizing can only occur if a child can comprehend what the
text says
to begin with.
“I want you to do something. Think of a song you really like.
Sing that
song in your head silently. Do you hear the words? Do you hear the
music? Do
you see hear talking in your mind. When you read words, silently, you
do the
same thing. You are hearing the words in your mind. You are also
changing the
mood of the words to tell the story. You hear the story in your mind
and you
imagine the picture of what is going on.
1. Read the article with the class the day before or the day of.
2. I will first explain to the students what summarization is. Class,
do you
remember the article we read yesterday. What was the article about?
That's
right. It was about feeding your pets to much food. Who can tell me
something
else about the article? Good, many pets are obese because their owners
feed
them table scraps and too much food. Your right, those are the ways to
prevent
pet obesity. (I will write these facts on the board.) Look at what
we've listed
about the article. The article was much longer than what we have here.
That is
because you have told me the most important things about the article.
This is
called summarization.
3. There are five simple steps to summarization. (Write steps on the
board
while explaining them out loud)
Step 1: Pick out the less important or repeated ideas from the story
and
eliminate.
Step 2: Pick out important details that are necessary to the story.
Step 3: Highlight the important details using keywords.
Step 4: List keywords in the order they appeared in the passage.
Step 5: Trim the list of key words down to one topic sentence.
By following these steps, you can easily summarize any reading
assignment.
Let's see if we can summarize another article.
4. Pass out copies of "Are Plastic Bags Harming the Environment?"
Read the article silently to yourself. Follow the rules on the board.
Let's
summarize the first paragraph together as a class. (The students will
summarize
the rest of the article on their own.)
5. Assessment: "Now, I want you to take out another piece of paper and
your pencils." Give each student a copy of an article. "I want
you to read this article
and summarize each paragraph as best as you can. Remember to use
the five
steps that we wrote on the board. Remember; think about the most
important
information. You may want to refer to the board where the five steps
are listed
if you get stuck on a paragraph." Allow the class to summarize the
article
alone. The students will then turn in a summarization of the article to
the
teacher. The teacher will read each one making sure every child
knows how
to summarize a story by using the checklist below.
Redundant information was taken out:
O
Yes O No
Trivial information was taken out:
O
Yes O No
There are only main points in the summarization:
O
Yes
O No
Click here to
return to Guidlines.
For further information, send e-mail to Katherine McCartha
References:
1. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngkids
2. http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/inspirations.html
Emily Watts, Super Summarizer!
Megan Schmidt, Lets Sum It Up!
Jennifer Hall, Summarization Time