Rationale: Students nee do learn how to summarize
text. By
summarizing, students will be able to better understand what they are
reading.
Students will follow steps to find the main idea and important details
in what
they are reading. These steps to summarization will help students to
find
meaning in the text.
Materials:
- One copy per
student of the article "Polar Bears Listed as Threatened" from
National Geographic Kids (April 12, 2009)
- A chart of the 5 summarization
steps:
1. Pick out important details that are
necessary to the story.
2. Pick out the less important or repeated
ideas and eliminate them.
3. Highlight the important and necessary
details using key words.
4. Pick a topic sentence
5. Invent a topic sentence if there is
none.
Procedure:
1. “Today we are
going to learn how to read text and understand it's meaning by using
summarization. First I want to talk about reading silently. Can someone
tell me
what silent reading is? Silent reading is when we read quietly to
ourselves.
Why do you think we read silently? There are many reasons but the most
important
reason is that we read silently to understand what we are reading. Summarizing what are reading can also help us
understand what we are reading. This makes the text shorter by taking
out
information that's not that important. Summarizing helps us better
understand
what we are reading. We are going to look at 5 steps that can
help us
summarize what we read and we are going to practice summarizing an
interesting
article about helping the endangered Polar Bears that I found on the
internet!”
2. Give students the chart of
five steps (listed below)
1. Pick out important details that are
necessary to the story.
2. Pick out the less important or repeated
ideas and eliminate them.
3. Highlight the important and necessary
details using key words.
4. Pick a topic sentence
5. Invent a
topic sentence if there is none.
“These are five
steps that help up to summarize text. First, we should pay attention to
the
important details. When we read, we need to pay attention to what the
whole
story is about and remember and write down the most important things.
We need
to weed out what isn't as important such as repetitive details and
things not
related to our purpose for reading it. Next, we need to look for key
words that
tell us necessary details. It is also important to pick a topic
sentence from
the text and if there isn't one, we should invent one.”
Model this while using a short article on the
overhead. Cross out unimportant
information,
star the big purpose for the article, and underline words that teach us
details
and facts. Then go back and choose a
topic sentence and write it at the top of the article.
Leave this example on the board for students
to view while working on their own.
3. Pass out the article
"Polar Bears Listed as Threatened" from the National Geographic Kids (April 12, 2009) to each student. Have
students read
the article silently to themselves. Give
them a copy of the 5 steps to follow while reading.
4. After they have finished,
go over the five steps of summarization again. Ask the students
questions to
help them pick out important parts of the story.
“Who can tell me
why Polar Bears are now being considered threatened? What are some
things we
can do to help save them? What are some
important words that tell you about this important issue?” These
questions help
students pick out the important details of the story as well as get the
main
idea.
5. Allow the
students to work in partners to make sure they did each of the steps
correctly.
6. Have the
students individually write a five
sentence summary starting with the topic sentence and then explaining
it with
the rest of the paragraph.
7. Monitor the students
summarizing their stories by walking around and observing. Help
students who
may be struggling and offer positive comments.
8. Have the students turn in
their summaries. Read each one to determine the students'
understanding. Check
for:
-the summary
is accurate
-summary is concise
with only the most important details
-unimportant
details are ommitted
-an
appropriate topic sentence was selected
References:
Bugg,
Katie. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/buggrl.html
Cherof,
Cassie http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/hoodrl.html
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Polar-bears-threatened