Storm to Summarization
Reading to Learn Lesson Design
Rationale:
An
essential part of students learning is comprehension.
Students can use many strategies to comprehend a text as long as it is a
strategy that helps a student remember what they read.
The most important strategy is summarizing the main idea to remember and
understand the text. This strategy
must be taught early on in reading so that students can remember the text they
read. To effectively summarize a text, students must follow several rules:
identify main information, delete trivial and redundant information, and relate
main and supporting ideas. This
lesson is designed to help students to identify and remember the main idea in
text.
1 Begin by introducing reading. "We have spent time on memorizing words,
sounding out words, crosschecking, and fluency.
Today we will begin putting all this information together and learning to
memorize and understand the stories.
Understanding the story is important and it allows us to relate it to our
own lives. We are going to practice
summarizing. When you summarize
text you pick out the most important information that the story is telling you.
Books are filled with words but when you summarize you delete information
that does not really matter. Only
the main idea helps us understand what happens in the story and today we are
going to figure out how to find this information.
We are going to practice reading silently.
Do we remember how to read silently? Correct, we stay at our seats
without talking and interrupting others. Watch me read silently." Teacher pulls
out a book and sits and reads silently for a few seconds to set an example.
"That is how we read silently, now I want you to pull out a reading book
and show me that you all can read silently." They read until the teacher tells
them to stop.
2 Teacher further explains how to find the main idea.
"Great job silent reading! It is important when you read to remember the
details of the 5 W’s-who, what, when, where, and why.
These questions help you to figure out the main idea and remember the
important details. The author gives
you a lot of information but using the 5 W’s you can piece together the
information given and summarize what the main idea of the text is.
Main ideas are in every text you read.
There are supporting details that go along with the main ideas to help
you better understand what you are reading.
When you are reading try to find a few supporting details that relate to
the main idea. We are going to find the main idea and supporting details in the
book How to Eat Fried Worms. When you
are reading I want you to write down the main details that you found.
Remember the 5 W’s who, what, when, where, and why."
3 The teacher gives a book talk on the book. "Billy
Forester is dared by his friends.
Billy never turns down a dare and is always up for a challenge.
His friends, Alan and Joe bet Billy fifty dollars he can’t eat 15 worms
in 15 days. Billy makes it through
his first three worms. When Alan
and Joe realize that he enjoys eating the worms they try and do anything they
can to make him loose the bet. Do
you want to find out if Billy eats all 15 of the worms despite all the tricks
Alan and Joe use to try and stop Billy.
You have to read How to Eat Fried
Worms to find out."
4 The teacher divides the class into groups and gives each student a copy of the
book. "The group you are in will be
your literature group for this book.
Your group will be there to read with you and discuss and answer any
questions you may have. Now I am
going to show you a model of how you can record the main idea and supporting
details." The teacher draws a giant worm on the board.
"On the head of the worm is where we write our main idea sentence.
Each chapter has a new worm and you use the worm to write details around
so that you can answer the questions you will have at the end of each chapter
you read. As you read remember the
5 W’s and write those details around the worm.
We are going to read chapter one together and fill in the first worm.
I will need your help filling in the main ideas so remember as much as
you can and take notes if you need to."
The teacher reads the first chapter aloud as the class follows along.
"Who knows what the important aspects of the first chapter are? That is
great, I am going to write the characters.
There is Billy, the main character, and Alan and Joe who are Billy’s
friends. I want you to finish
with your group the main idea and supporting detail of this chapter."
After the students finish
give them two questions to test their comprehension of the first chapter they
should be related to the main idea and supporting detail.
(5 W’s) "What did Alan, Billy, and Joe get into trouble for doing? Where
would Alan get the money if he lost his bet? Very good I want you to read
chapter two for next Tuesday and remember to write down details if you think you
might forget.
5 The next time they meet to discuss the book their groups get together and talk
about the chapter, fill in the worm with important ideas, and answer
comprehension questions. The teacher should walk around and assist as needed and
always remind them to remember the 5 W’s.
6 Assessment will be graded after the book is finished.
The students will turn the books in along with all the worm summarization
guides for each chapter. These will
be graded to see if the students used the summarization strategy.
The teacher meets with each group that needs help and extra assistance.
The checklist for each worm chart is as followed: Does the group have one
main idea sentence for each chapter that portrays what happens? Does the group
have a minimum of three supporting details? Do the supporting details support
the group’s main idea? The teacher then meets with each group and has the
students retell the story based on their diagrams and ideas.
The will compose each chart into miniature chapters based on their main
ideas and supporting details including illustrations for each chapter.
Refrences:
Rockwell, Thomas. How to Eat Fried Worms.
Random House Children’s Books; NY, 1973.
Adams, Marilyn Jager. Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print.
The Map of Summarization Reading to Learn by
Larkin Ade.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/inroads/aderl.html