The Sum of It All
Rationale:
Children go
through so many steps in order to become smooth, fluent readers.
However, they must gain the ultimate ability of summarizing if they are
truly able to comprehend what they read. This lesson is designed to
help children learn to summarize, and actually comprehend what they
read by practicing those skills using a bookmark with proper steps, an
article to read, and a practice activity.
Materials:
-Bookmark with summarizing tips
Pick out important facts.
Remove information that is not very useful, or that
does not back up topic sentences.
Pick out repeated ideas and delete them.
Pick out a topic sentence.
-Copy of article for each child,
Honey Bee Mystery
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Honey-bee-mystery
-Paper
-Pencil
-Highlighter for each child
Procedures:
1.���Hello class! Today, we will be talking about comprehension and
summarization. Can anyone tell me what they think it means to
comprehend and to summarize?��� Discuss comprehension and summarizing
so that children really understand what it means. ���Comprehension is
the process of constructing meaning from text, and summarizing involves
picking out significant points and putting it together to get an
overall review of a reading.���
2.Distribute the bookmark to all students and go over
each step. ���After reading this bookmark, tell me
some ways we can practice using these steps when reading���Using
highlighters can help us remember what sentences are important.���
Discuss other ways.
3.Distribute article,
Honey Bee Mystery, to each child.
Article Talk: ���This article tells us more about bees
and how they help us. According to the article, bees do more than just
make honey.
But, you���ll have to read to find out just
how important bees are to us! I want everyone to read this article
silently to yourselves and use your bookmarks to help you with the
steps you need to summarize this article. When everyone is finished
reading, lay your pencils down so that I will know that you are
done.��� Allow students to read article and walk around as they read.
Encourage them to use their highlighters and try to remember important
parts of the article.
4.While the students read, ask a few of them to tell the class a
sentence they have highlighted. Write their sentences on the board.
���See how I am writing these important sentences on the board; this is
an example of summarizing. Putting these sentences together helps us
get an overall idea of what the article is about.���
5.After the students finish, take up the article and have them write
down significant things they remember from the article. ���This is not
a test or anything guys, I just want to see how much you remember from
the article and if your bookmark helped you. I want everyone to write
at least 3 sentences about the article that are important and I will
take them up when you are done. Have fun with this, if you would like
to write more than 3 sentences you can certainly do so!���
Assessment:
Through asking the children to write down sentences after I have taken
up the article, I will be able to verify if they comprehended what they
read and are able to write sentences that give a brief, informative
idea of what the article is about. Once I have taken up everyone���s
paper, we would then discuss the article as a class and I would explain
that discussing is another way to summarize. I will also have students
come up to the desk individually and read a short passage. After
reading the passage, I will ask them a specific question to see if they
comprehended what they read.
References:
-National Geographic Article.
Honey Bee Mystery
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Honey-bee-mystery
-The Reading Genie Website.
Get to the Point by Katie Guyton
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/guytonrl.html