Sum It Up!!!
Rationale: The main goal of reading
is comprehension. There are many strategies that students can use to
help them
comprehend written text. One of these strategies is summarization.
Summarization is the process of finding the most important information
from a
reading. Students must follow several rules to help them effectively
summarize.
These include identifying the main information, deleting the trivial
and
redundant information, and relating main and supporting ideas.
Effective use of
summarization can greatly increase comprehension skills. In this
lesson, the students will learn the 5 rules of summarization and
apply them by reading an article and writing a summary.
Materials:
paper,
pencil, and highlighter for
each student
dry
erase board and dry erase
marker
photocopies
of "The Great Koala Rescue" for each student
(http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngkids/0503/)
Procedure:
2) Introduce summarization to the class. “The main purpose of
reading is comprehension; that
means that the reason that we read is to understand what we are
reading. One strategy that can
help us comprehend what we are reading is summarization.
Summarization is a strategy in which you find the most important
information
in the text. Using summarization will help
you
be able to comprehend what you
are reading.”
3)
Explain the rules of summarization. “There are five very important
rules that you should always remember when
you are
summarizing. First, pick out the
important details. Second,
pick out the details that are
repeated or are not important
and get rid of them. Third, use easy
keywords
to highlight important details.
Fourth,
list those keywords in order as they
appeared in the passage.Fifth, trim the list of
keywords to make
one topic sentence.” (Write these on the dry
erase
board as you talk about them.)
4)
Next, read a short story or article to the students.
After you finish reading, model how to
summarize using the five steps. “I am going to model for you how to
summarize using the article/story
I just
read using our five steps.” Tell the students
to pay close attention.
6)
Next, pass out a photocopy of "The Great Koala Rescue" , a
pencil, and a
highlighter
to each student. (The photocopy will
let the students mark on it.)
8)Tell the students to read the article silently and to highlight the key points
with
the
highlighter and to mark out the
unimportant information with the pencil as they
read. Allow enough time for each student to
finish and do not move on
until everyone is done.
9)
After the students have finished reading and marking, give each student
a piece of paper and have them write a
summary of "The Great Koala Rescue." Tell the
students to make
sure to use the 5
steps that we learned to write the
summary.
10)
Allow the students ample time to complete the assignment and collect
the summary for assessment.
Assessment:
Call
the students one at a time to the teacher’s desk or table. Have them
read their summary aloud to you. This will
not only
allow you to assess their summary,
but it
will also
provide an opportunity for you to assess their reading (if necessary)
and also to allow them to opportunity to read.
References:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invent/hortonrl.html
Brinkley,
Elizabeth. Pigging Out On
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/persp/brinkleyrl.html
The Great Koala Rescue