Try and Sum This
Up!
Lesson Design:
Reading to
Learn
Rationale: Comprehension is a
vital part
of reading. The ability to summarize is one that aids in the
development of
reading comprehension skills. Summarizing also allows students to pick
out
important information from a story, and leave the unimportant parts
behind. In
this lesson, students will practice exactly HOW
to leave out the useless information when they read, and pick out the
important
information in order to summarize. Students will also exercise creating
topic
sentences.
Materials:
-Dry
Erase Board (for teacher use)
-Dry
Erase Markers (for teacher use)
-Helpful
Hints to Summarizing cards (one
per student)
-Highlighters
(at least one per student)
-National
Geographic article called 'Honey Bee Mystery' (one copy of article per
student)
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Honey-bee-mystery
-Graphic
organizer for summarizing (one per student) –This will have
a few lines at the top asking for a topic sentence. Then
it will have four boxes, that each ask for an important fact from the
article
(so students will need to pick four important facts that they feel are
the most
important. At the bottom there is a big box for the student’s summary
to be
written in, using the important facts.
-Pencils
(at least one per student, plus extra)
Procedure:
1. Explain
why it is important, and review the background knowledge: "Today we are going to learn how to remember
what we read after we read something. It is very important to remember
the
information that you learn about when you are reading. We are going to
work on
remembering the information that we read, and telling this information
to
someone else. When we tell someone about a book that we read, do we
tell every single thing that happens? (no).
Of course not! That would take too long! We only tell that person a
little bit
about the story, using the important facts and ideas. Making a story
shorter by
only telling a little bit about it is called summarizing.
When you read the back of a chapter book to find out
what the book is about, you are reading a summary. See why summaries
are so
important?"
2. Explain
how to summarize/model it: "In order
to summarize something that you read, you need to be able to find the
information that is important, and delete (get rid of) the information
that is
not as important to the topic." Put the facts about me on the board
[(1) I love
to read, (2) My favorite book is Officer
Buckle and Gloria, (3) I love to go swimming, and (4) I read one
hour a day] and tell them that the topic is "reading". "These are facts
about me. If I
asked you to summarize these facts, and only pick out what is
important, you
would first decide what the topic is: reading." Go through and talk
about what
topics are important to reading and which are not. They would decide
that the
fact that I love to go swimming is not important when they are telling
someone
about reading, regarding me. Allow the students to go over the facts
that are
important, and come up with a topic sentence if they were to summarize
this
information. This is simple practice for what they will do with their
whole
texts later.
3. Continue
explaining how: Pass out the Helpful
Hints to Summarizing cards. Talk about the three helpful hints to
look at
before summarizing. Go over each helpful hint out loud so that each
student
understands what each step means.
*The
three helpful hints:
-Delete
information that is not important or repeated throughout the reading.
-Highlight
the information that is important
-Find
a topic sentence that covers the topic (main idea), and if there is not
one,
make one of your own.
4. Simple
practice with whole texts: Hand out the article the students are
going to
read, and eventually summarize for practice with teacher guidance. "We
are
going to read this article silently. Does anyone know what it means to
read
silently? Right, you read to yourself and you do not make any noise
because you
do not want to bother other people in your class that are also reading.
You can
sit wherever you want to in the class, so that you are comfortable when
you are
reading. You can use your highlighter to highlight the important
information.
Be sure to follow your three helpful hints to summarizing. When you
think you
are done, you can put your highlighters away, go back to your seat, and
wait
quietly for everyone else to finish." Give the "book-talk" for the
article.
*The
"Book-talk":
Bees are what we call "pollinators", which means that they enable the
plants to
produce the fruits and nuts that we eat by carrying pollen from one
plant to
another. Some plants are pollinated when pollen is carried by the wind,
but for
some we need the bees to do the pollinating. But, across the United
States,
honeybees are flying away from their hives and dying. Empty hives are
causing a
lot of worry about some of the important food crops that we depend on
for a lot
of food. Why are all of the bees flying away from their hives? What can
we do
about it? You have to read to find out!
5.
Now
that everyone is back in their seats, go over summarizing this article
on the
dry erase board. Draw a circle on the board, to put the main idea in,
then draw
a line out of the circle for the important facts that the students
find. When
important facts are related to each other, draw the line out of the
fact that
it is related to, instead of having another line come out of the
circle,
regarding the same fact. This is like a web, for summarizing. "Who
knows what
the main idea, or topic, of this article is? Right, it’s about the
reasons why
Honey Bees are dying, and people are finding empty nests." Put this in
the
middle of the circle. Then ask the class to name different important
facts that
they highlighted as they read. Before you write it on the board, around
the
circle, allow the class to agree or disagree as to whether or not this
is
important to the topic. This way, they are working together, but the
teacher is
guiding the lesson.
6. Assessment: Hand out the personal
copies of the graphic organizer for summarizing. Go over each part of
the
graphic organizer so that all of the students know what they are
supposed to be
doing in order to complete the page. "As you are trying to complete
this page,
you can look at the information on the board that we all decided was
important
in this article. You will have to choose the four facts that you think
are the
most important, and write your topic sentence and summary based on
those.
People around you may pick different facts than you, so do not bother
looking
to see what other people are doing on their page." Allow the students
time to
finish these summarizations. I will read through the facts they chose,
and make
sure that the topic sentence and summary reflect those facts, and only
those
facts. Then, I will make sure that they understand how to pick
important
information./facts and followed directions.
References:
Summing
it all Up! By Katie DeFoor
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/defoorrl.html
National
Geographic – “Honey Bee Mystery”
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Honey-bee-mystery
Source
of the graphic organizer idea: (page 8)
http://www2.scholastic.com/content/collateral_resources/pdf/r/reading_bestpractices_vocabulary_sr_allgo.pdf
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