What Did That Say?
Rationale:
As students read and become better
readers, it is important for them to know how to gain meaning and
understanding about the story. Summarizing is a strategy to gain
comprehensive strategies, and they are learning the most important
information and ideas from the reading. Although there are many
comprehension strategies, this lesson will focus on teaching students
how to summarize in their own words their text selection. Students will
also learn strategies for selecting the critical information from text,
especially expository text.
Materials:
-Bookmark with the
5 rules of summarization for each student
-Pencil, paper, and
highlighter for each student
-Assessment
checklist for each student
Did the student?
|
Yes
|
No
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Comprehends the
information from the passage.
|
|
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Got rid of unnecessary
information from the passage.
|
|
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Picked out the most
important information from the passage.
|
|
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Write at least one
sentence that covers everything that is important information from the
passage.
|
|
|
-
Balloon-Popping Dog! article for each student
Procedures:
1. Say: Today, we
are going to learn an important tool that will help make you all better
readers.
Have you heard of the summarization?
Summarization is the process of cutting out pointless
information in what we read and picking out the main facts that we as
readers need to get the story.
Has anyone ever written a summary, or summarized what they had
read? Why is summarizing important?
(Helps for us, as readers, to determine what the important information
is and what is not important).
2. Hand out the
bookmarks with the rules of summarization on them. Say: There are
five steps to summarize. First, you pick
out all the important details. Second, you find details that are
repeated or that are not important to the text and get rid of
them. Third, you use key words to highlight the important
details. Fourth, you put the key words in order as they appear in
the passage. Fifth and lastly, you use the key words list to make
a topic sentence.
3. Say: Let's read Balloon-Popping Dog! from National
Geographic and I will show you how I would summarize this article.
I will pass out the article to the students, and then I will
model summarizing by first reading it aloud and then summarizing the
short article.
Say: Balloons
don't last very long around Anastasia the
Jack Russell terrier.
Her favorite game is popping as many as she can!
The pooch can pop 100 balloons in 53.7
seconds, the fastest time a dog has popped that many.
Usually the dog bites the balloons in the air, but the record
was set with the balloons secured to the ground.
The noise might scare other dogs, but that
just makes the game more fun for Anastasia.
She likes balloons so much that she goes nuts when a blimp flies
over her backyard!
- First, I am going
to get rid of unneeded details.
Balloons don't last long around the dog.
How long it
takes her to pop balloons.
How dogs usually bite and behave around balloons.
That the dog
does flips when she is excited.
- Next, I am to
select what I think are the most important details that help me
understand the text.
The dog loves popping balloons.
She has the fastest balloon-popping time.
She isn't scared of the popping noise.
- Finally, I am
going to write a short summary.
The dog in this story loves popping
balloons and isn't scared of the noise. She
is
has the fastest balloon popping time of any dog.
5. Next, the
students will practice summarizing on their own. I will pass out
The Dog Whisperer: Helping Dogs-and Owners-Be on Their Best
Behavior article to each student, and give a brief book talk about
it. Say:
This article is about a man named Cesar
Millan that has his own television show on the National Geographic
Channel.
He helps dogs and their owners understand each other, and he
teaches dog owners how to take better care of their dogs.
The article talks all about Cesar and how he trains dogs.
If you want to find out more about him, you'll have to read to
find out.
The students will then read the article and use summarization
strategies that we have practiced today to eliminate information that
isn't necessary for the meaning of the article and pick out the
important information.
While the students are reading the article silently, they will
mark out the unnecessary information with your pencil, highlight the
key information, and write a one or two sentence summary of what they
have read.
4) After the
students have read and wrote down a couple of summarization sentences,
they will turn their sentences in and then get into groups of
2-3. Once they have formed their groups, they will discuss the
article and share what they did to summarize the articles. This will
allow the students to share different techniques to summarize a
story.
5)
Students will be assessed on their
summarization sentences. I will use a checklist to assess their
progress. Students are required to earn at least 3 out of the 4 checks
possible. (See checklist below.) I will use this information to
determine which students need to work more on this skill.
Reference:
- National Geographic Kids. (2006) Balloon-Popping Dog!
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/MoreStories/Balloonpoppingdog
- National Geographic Kids. (2006) The Dog Whisperer: Helping Dogs-and Owners-Be on Their Best Behavior.
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Dogwhisperer
-Montgomery, Greer.
Sum It All Up! Spring 2009.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/projects/montgomeryrl.html