Summarization
Superstars
Reading to Learn
Rationale:
Comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading instruction, however,
this task is complicated and requires practice. There are various
strategies that can be used to gain meaning and knowledge from a
text. One strategy is summarization. Summarization is a key strategy
that fluent readers use in order to understand text. To
be able to read and recall information from an expository text,
children need direct instruction in how to appropriately summarize
material. By implementing these skills students will be better
prepared to recall and discuss information from an assigned reading. In this
lesson, students will learn the six steps of summarization which will
allow them to summarize what they are reading and
ultimately gain a better understanding of the text.
Materials:
Paper
Pencil
Marker board
Markers
A
bookmark for each student with the 6 summarization steps on it
Summarization steps:
1. Pick out important details that are
necessary to the story.
2. Pick out the less important ideas
from the passage and delete them.
3. Pick out the repeated ideas from the
passage and delete them.
4.
Highlight the important and necessary details
using key words.
5. Pick a topic sentence
6. Invent a topic sentence if there is
none.
Copy of Space Rock
Makes a Crash
Landing, National Geographic Kids News
for each student.
Procedures:
1. “Today
we are going to talk about
comprehension. Does anyone know what
that means? The reason that we
learn to read is so that we can comprehend, or understand, the
information
given in whatever we are reading. When we comprehend, we
understand what
we are reading and are able to remember what we read even after we are
finished.
So, today we are going to learn some steps that will help us comprehend
what we
read. This new technique I am going to talk about is
summarization.
When we summarize we decide which information in the story or writing
is
important for understanding. Today we
are going to practice summarizing by reading through the story and
picking out the
main idea and the most important details, and forgetting about the
things that
don’t go along with the main idea."
2. Now I
will explain summarization. I will have
the six rules already written on
the board so that I can refer to them as I introduce them. “The first step is
to pick out important details that we think are
necessary to the story. The second step is to pick out the less
important ideas and take them away. The
third step is to pick out ideas that are repeated and take them
away. The
fourth step is to highlight the important details using key
words. For
the fifth step we pick a topic sentence. And our last step is to
invent a
topic sentence if we don’t have one. I’m going to pass out
bookmarks to
each of you that have these steps on them so you won’t forget our 6
steps of
summarization. You can use these whenever you need a little help.
3. "Now that we’ve talked about
comprehension
and summarization, we are going to read something and see if we can use
our new
steps. Before I pass out the article, I'm going to tell you a
little bit about it. We are going to read a passage about
something very unusual that happened. A New Zealand couple had a
surprise visitor in turned their world upside down. So if you
want to find about more about this surprise visitor, you'll need to
read on. So, read the first paragraph SILENTLY to yourselves.
This means that
you will read what is in the passage without saying the words out loud. This lets each person concentrate on what
they are reading. Also, while you are reading, make sure that you
are
getting enough information so that you will be able to summarize the
paragraph after you read it. When summarizing,
remember how important it is to make sure that you are trying to
separate the
important details from the ones that might not be so important.”
4. After the
class is finished reading, I am going to model the 6 steps of
summarization
with the whole class. I am going to use
the first paragraph of the text in order to make sure they understand
all of the
steps and I am going to write all of the responses on the board. "After reading through
the first paragraph, these are the main points that I came up with.
1) A grapefruit size meteorite crashed through a roof.
2) The house was in
5. "Does everybody feel
comfortable with
summarizing now? Great! Now that everyone knows what they
are
doing, I want you to read the rest of the article silently and
summarize it to yourself using the 6 steps we talked about. If
you need any help you can look on
the board or at your bookmarks."
6. When they have
finished reading silently, they will summarize the article on their
own.
"Now that you are all finished
reading, take out your piece of paper and pencil, and summarize the
article. Make sure that you remember to list the important
details of the
article. Separate the important details from the less important
ones. Remove any repeated information.
Then, make sure to list your keywords that you create from the
important details.
Last, use your keywords and your main points to pick your topic
sentence, or use them to form your own topic
sentence. If you have any questions, please raise your hand and
I’ll come
and help you.”
Assessment: I will take up the
student’s summarizations to see how well they understood the
concept. When
assessing each student’s summarizations, I will have a checklist with
the six
rules on it and I will check “yes” next to the rule if they followed it
and
“no” next to a rule if they did not.
Also, the entire time they are working on their summarizations,
I will
walk around to make sure that they are following the steps written on
the board
and on their bookmarks.
References:
Gamble, Beth. Super
Space Summarization. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invent/gamblerl.html
“Space Rock
Makes a Crash
Landing.” Staff. National Geographics Kids Magazine.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/kids/space.html
18 April 2005.
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