I. Rationale: The
main goal of reading is comprehension. Students can use many
strategies
to comprehend written text. One of the most important strategies
for
children to learn is summarization. Summarization can be defined
as
finding the most important information from a reading. To
effectively
summarize a text, students must follow several rules including identify
main
information, delete trivial and redundant information, and relate main
and
supporting ideas. 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 Luc Jacket’s March of the
Penguins, five large sheets of butcher paper, markers
III.
Procedures:
1. I will pre-assign the book March of the Penguins,
by Luc
Jacket, to the entire class at
least a week in advance to this lesson.
2. I will start of by
telling the children how important it is to understand what they
read. I
will tell them that there is an easy way to help them accomplish this
task
called a story map.
3. On
the day the reading is to be finished, I will
ask the students to take out their books.
4. Now that everyone has completed the book March of the Penguins, 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.
5. I want everyone to skim chapter. As you skim and
refresh
your memory, write down some words or ideas that you think explain
the
plot of the story.
6. 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 show them an example of
a story map. (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 are 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.
7.
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.
8.
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.
9.
We have four groups of students in our classroom. There are four
more chapters
in March of the Penguins. Each
group will be responsible for one chapter. Everyone will
skim his
or her chapter silently. When everyone in your group is
finished, raise your hand and I will bring you a piece of butcher
paper
and markers. As a group, you will make your own story web
and write
a summary of your chapter at the bottom of the page.
10.
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 March of the Penguins.
V.
References:
1.Jacket, Luc. March of the Penguins
National Geographic Binding Society. 2005
2.Katie
Burns. Putting It All Together With Summarization.
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/explor/burnsrl.html
3.Terri
Swindall.
Learning to
Summarize. http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/inroads/swindallrl.html
4. Jill Overstreet
Summarizing puts the pieces together
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/connect/overstreetrl.html
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