Super Summarizers
Reading To Learn
Rational
When going through school, students become better readers and gain more
and more useful strategies. The
main reason for reading is for comprehension.
One strategy tat will help accomplish comprehension is summarization.
Comprehension is easier when students can remember and communicate the
main points from what they just read.
Practicing picking out the most important information and deleting the
unnecessary information makes comprehension effortless.
During this lesson, students will use summarization strategies to help
them find and write the most important ideas from an article.
Materials
• Copy of the article for
each student (see reference)
• Pencil for each child
• Highlighter for each
student
• Paper for each student
• Assessment checklist for
each child (below)
• Article for the teacher
to put on the overhead or document camera
• Overhead projector
• Overhead marker
Procedures:
• "Does anyone remember
what we talked about last time? Fluency, right! And what is fluency? Right,
reading smoothly, quickly with expression.
Today we are working with a new concept, but we still need to be fluent
readers when working with the concept."
• "Has anyone every heard
of summarization? Does anyone know what this means? Yes, summarization is
summing up or putting together all the important information from an article,
text, or passage. We summarize things to make it easier to understand and to
delete information that is not helpful."
• "There are three really
important parts for us to do when we summarize.
First, we delete or take out all the unimportant information. We do this
so we will not just be copying the entire passage, article, or text.
We just want the important information.
Second, we make sure and reread the details we think are important and
make sure we didn't leave out anything important.
Last, we put it together and compose a statement that covers everything
the author is saying about the article, passage, or text.
Let's see if everyone remembers.
What is the first step? Second step? Third? Great!"
• "Class we are about to
become summarizers. To become great
summarizers, you have to practice and follow the three steps we talked about.
Today we are reading about giant jellyfish that are appearing everywhere
and making fishing hard for fishermen. These
jellyfish can be as large as a male lion.
How do you think they are messing up fishing so much for fisherman?
We will have to read to find out. Lets
read our article together out loud."
• Once the article has been
read aloud by the class I will reread the first paragraph and show them how to
summarize it. "I want everyone to
watch and see how I chose the most important parts of the passage.
Listen for how I see if the information is important or not:
- Are aliens
attacking the Sea of
Japan? Not exactly. But these
gigantic blobs
are unwelcome
visitors from another place. Called
Nomura's jellyfish,
the wiggly, pinkish giants can weigh up to 450 pounds (204 kilograms)--as heavy
as a male lion--and
they're swarming by the millions.
•
"The first two
sentences are just a trigger sentence getting the reader interested in the
article. The thing I think that is
important from these sentences are the location of the event going on so I am
going to highlight sea of Japan and cross the rest out with my overhead marker,
you will cross it out with your pencil.
The next sentence has a little bit of important information.
We need to know they are gigantic and unwelcome, so I am going to
highlight that. Most of the time if
something is unwelcome, it is from another place, so that is not so important
and I am going to cross that out.
We do not need to know they are blobs so we can cross out the rest of the
sentence leaving us with gigantic and unwelcome.
The last sentence also has some important information.
We need to know what he jellyfish are called, so we are going to
highlight Nomura's jellyfish. It is
not that important they are wiggly and pinkish so I will cross that out.
We already said they were giants so cross that out too.
Because they are giant, we don't need to know how big they are or what
they are as heavy are, cross that out.
Do you think "they are swarming by the millions" is important?
I think so. It is just not
one jellyfish, it is millions, so I am going to highlight that too."
• "So I am left with
gigantic, unwelcome, Nomura's jellyfish, and they're swarming by the millions.
Does everyone think that this information is important?
Now what do we do next?
Right, we need to sum it up in a topic sentence.
Gigantic, unwelcome Nomura jellyfish are swarming by the millions in the
Sea of Japan. Does this sound like a good topic sentence?
Did I cover everything important?
Lets write that down on our paper."
• "Now I want you to
practice summarizing the rest of the article on your own.
The three steps are on the board if you get stuck and need help."
The class will work individually on reading the article, finding
important information, and delete the other information.
When they think they have all the important information they will write
topic sentences and their summaries.
• When most of the class
has completed the assignment, I will begin calling students one at a time to my
desk to read their summary to me. I
will go through the assessment checklist while the student is reading their
summary. When they are finished, I
will go over what went well or what did not go so well with the student.
References:
Musgrave, Ruth. "Giant Jellyfish Invasion."
National Geographic Kids. National
Geographic Society. n.d. Web. 11 April 2011.
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/giant-jellyfish-invasion/.
Mathews, Pearson.
Hurry! Let's Summarize!
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/adventures/mathewsrl.htm
Assessment Checklist:
Students Name:
_______________________________________
Date: ___________________
Yes
No
_____
_____ Picked out the
most important information
_____
_____ Deleted
unnecessary information
_____
_____ Understood the
information from the text/article/passage
_____
_____ Wrote a
sentence(s) summarizing the most important parts of text
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