Kincey Hicks
Let’s
Find the Main Ideas!
Kincey Hicks
Rationale:
For a child to be able to
use and recall what they read, they need effective strategies for
comprehension. One of the most important
comprehension strategies used by elementary children is summarizing. Summarizing allows children to organize and
compress large bodies of text into memorable ideas for easy
recollection. This lesson will give some
options for
teaching and implementing the summarizing strategy.
Materials:
-Paper
-Pencil/pen
-Story of the Sea (1979 Childcraft).
1. Begin
the lesson by giving students the basic
ideas of summarization. This is best
done by explaining that summarization is a reading tool that is used to
help
remember the most important facts about a text or passage.
2. [In this
lesson I will use the example of “The
Sea in Danger” (page 101).] Have the students read “The Sea in Danger”. This passage contains six paragraphs. Give
the students an opportunity to read
silently to themselves. When they are through, ask very detailed
questions
about the reading like “How much water is pumped into the factories
every day?”
More than likely most students will not remember that small detail.
Talk to
your students about the difficulties in memorizing every minute detail
of a
passage and the importance of gathering main ideas from stories and how
this is
what summarizing is all about.
3. Explain
the six rules of summarization to
students. a) Delete unimportant information, b) delete repeated
information, c)
substitute easy terms for lists of items, d) add a series of events
with an
easy action term, e) select a topic sentence, and f) invent a topic
sentence if
there is none.
4. Model the above rules for
students to observe as a scaffold. Use a passage such as “The Sea in
Danger.” Make
a summary of this passage using the rules above for students to see.
5. Choose another passage to
summarize such as: “Life in the Sea” (104). This time allow the class
to work
together on a summary. As they come up
with main details write them on the board to give another scaffolding
example
for those who don’t understand. It is a great way for children to see
their
peers thinking and creating.
6. Divide
students up into small groups. Assign each
group a different passage from
Story of the Sea. Give time to write a summary on their passage. When
they are
finished, allow each group to share their summary with the class.
7. For
assessment, have each student choose a
passage from Story of the Sea and have each student write a summary on
their
passage.
-Story of the Sea, The 1979
Childcraft Annual.
-Sharon Gulls A Short Story:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/insights/gullrl.html