Sum it
Up!
Cydney Dorsey,
Reading to Learn
Rationale:
Successful
readers must use the tools of reading to comprehend the text that they
are
reading. Reading is not successful if meaningful comprehension is not
the end
outcome. Strategies that have proven to be effective in enhancing
students’
reading comprehension include: summarization,
representational imagery, mnemonic devices, story grammar, question
generation,
and question answering. This lesson design will focus on the skill of
summarizing by teaching students’ how to pull the important details out
of informational
articles they will read.
-Class
set of "To Catch a Dragonfly" articles:
http://sciencenewsforkids.com/articles/20061213/Feature1.asp
-Class
set of "Antarctica Warming, Threatens Penguins" articles:
http://sciencenewsforkids.com/articles/20090204/Note3.asp
-Summarization
Hints poster: Focus on the main points. Summarize each paragraph as you
read. Compose
a paragraph detailing the author's main points about the topic you
read.
-Summarization
Rules poster: Delete trivial information,
Delete
redundant information, Substitute general terms for a list of items,
Integrate
a series of events with a general action term, Identify the topic
sentence, Invent
a topic sentence if there is none.
-Highlighter
for each student
-Chart
paper
-Markers
-Pencils
for each student
-Assessment
Worksheets: Include places for them to summarize each paragraph in the
article,
Include place for them to summarize the article as a whole.
1.
Introduce the
lesson to the students.
Begin
by explaining to the students what it means to summarize an
informational
article.
Say:
"Students, summarizing is what we do to tell the whole of what a piece
of
text is about in just a few sentences. Summarizing does not include
many
details, but focuses only on the main points of the text."
2.
Present the
Summarizing Rules & Summarizing Hints posters.
Say:
"Students, these posters can give you some guidelines to go by when
summarizing a piece of text. First, it is important to delete all
trivial
information that you read. Trivial information is information that is
not
pertinent to the main point of the article – these can be supporting
details,
or trivial facts. Secondly, it is important to delete all redundant
information
– oftentimes, you may find that information is repeated several times
throughout the text. It is important to process the information the
first time,
but redundancies should not be acknowledged. Next, be conscious of
lists of
items or events – these should be condensed into a generalized concept.
Pay
attention to topic sentences of each paragraph, as these are helpful in
identifying the main points of the writing. If topic sentences are not
easily
identifiable, attempt to create a topic sentence for each paragraph."
3. Guided
Practice.
Next,
I will pass out the “Antarctica Warming” articles. I will read this
article
aloud to the students, displaying it on the document viewer. As we
read, I will
stop at the end of each paragraph modeling and asking the students to
assist me
in summarizing each paragraph. I will write down each sentence that we
use to
summarize each paragraph on large chart paper. Once we have reached the
end of
the article, we will go over all the paragraph summarization sentences
on our
chart paper, and I will use these and combine them to create a whole
article
summary.
4. Independent
Practice.
Pass
the “To Catch a Dragonfly” articles out to the class. Explain to them
that they
will be reading them silently. Suggest that they use their highlighters
to
highlight main ideas of the article as they read, to make their
summarization
easier. They should complete their summarization worksheet as they
read,
summarizing each paragraph, before summarizing the entire article.
While the
students are reading, the teacher will circulate the classroom, helping
students as they read silently and assessing their completion of the
summarization worksheets.
5. Once
the students
have finished, they should turn their summarization worksheets in for
the
teacher to look over and assess. The teacher should be certain to check
that
the students followed the guidelines of summarization presented earlier
in the
lesson.
Resources:
White,
Amy. Fly High & Summarize.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/odysseys/whiterl.html
Saye,
Maggie. Sum It Up!
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/odysseys/sayerl.html