STRENGTH
IN SUMMARIZING
Rationale:
The goal of teaching
reading is to increase
students’ comprehension. Teaching the strategies of summarization will
aid in
this process. In this lesson students will learn to identify important
and less
important details of the text while completing a fishbone map.
Materials:
Highlighters for each
student in case they need
to mark important sentences or phrases in the text.
Copies of the article Gorillas
in Crisis by
Kathleen Donovan-Snavely
Pencils for each
student
Procedure:
1.Today we are going
to read a text and learn
how to create a summary of what we have read by using a fishbone map. A
fishbone map is similar to writing a summary. When you create a
fishbone map
you find the meaningful and important parts of what you read and you
put them
on the map. After creating a fishbone map, you can use the map to help
you
write a summary of the text in your own words.
2. We are going to
read the article Gorillas
in Crisis. In pairs, you are going to first read the article
silently. You
are then going to complete a fishbone map. After completing your
fishbone map
you will compose a summary of the article in your own words.
3. Before you get
started lets review strategies
that are helpful to use when summarizing. Can anybody remember the
first
helpful strategy when summarizing? Yes, that’s right, get rid of any
unnecessary or repeated information. Next we pick out the most
important items
or events. And then we write a statement that covers everything the
author is
trying to say about the topic.
Remember these
strategies can be used to help
compose summaries as well as helping us complete a fishbone map. Each
part of
the fishbone map is actually a mini summary of each paragraph.
4. Now we are going to
do read the first
paragraph together and fill out the fishbone maps for the first
paragraph.
Listen to how I think aloud as we read this first paragraph. I will than model how I go through all the
strategies. I will have an overhead projector and I will have the
students help
me create the first paragraph of the fishbone map.
5. Now that we have
completed the first
paragraph together and we have practiced summarizing, it is your turn
to
practice summarizing on your own. I want you to work with your partner
and fill
out the rest of your fishbone map. After you finish with the fishbone
map, I
want each student to compose a summary in your own words.
6.As you are silently
reading this article use
your three summarizing rules to help you comprehend the text. You can
also use
your highlighter to highlight important information and a pencil to
cross out
unnecessary information.
7. For Assessment I
will collect both the
fishbone maps and the summaries the students did for the article and
check the
students ability to summarize by the checklist below.
*Are important ideas
and events included in the
summary?
*Do they state the author’s main idea and supporting details?
*Is redundant
information left out of the
summary?
Resources:
Scaling Back to
Essentials: Scaffolding
Summarization With Fishbone Mapping, READ-WRITE-THINK, http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=277
Gorillas in Crisis by
Kathleen Donovan-Snavely, 2004.
http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson277/gorillas.pdf
Fishbone Map Template
http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson277/template.pdf