Let's Sum
It All Up!
Reading to
Learn
Rationale: A vital tool in reading is
comprehension. It is important for
readers to understand the material that they read and to be able to
summarize
events that occur in a particular piece of reading material. Students
should be
able to understand what a summarization is and how to apply that in
reading.
Materials:
Class
set of the article "Honey Bee Mystery" found at :
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Honey-bee-mystery
2
pieces of paper for each student
Pencils
Dry
erase markers
Whiteboard
Bookmark
for each child
Procedures:
1.
"Today we
are
going to learn about comprehension. If
you know what comprehension is, raise your hand. Good,
comprehension is when we have something
that we read and after we read it we understand what it meant. We
all
want to be good at comprehending what we read, we are going to become
experts. We are going to use a strategy
called summarization to help us. When we summarize we only
concentrate on
the important parts of a story. We have 3 steps to follow that
will help
us remember what summarization is.
2.
Now I will
explain
summarization. I will pass out the bookmarks and have them read
the
bookmarks. We will read the summarization bookmark aloud.
"3
steps help us summarize our text so that we can remember what it says.
These 3
steps are:
a.
Delete
unimportant
information
b.
Highlight
important
details
c.
Find a
main idea
3.
Now I will
show them
a copy of the article "Honey Bee Mystery".
This is a story about honey bees all over the United States and
the
mystery of their disappearance. I wonder
what is happening to the honey bees?
Let's begin our KWL chart. What
are some things we already know about honeybees? And
some things we want to know? Let's read
and find out!
4.
The
students will
silent read the text and I will walk around and help anyone if they
have
questions. Can anyone tell me what the main topic is?
That's
right! It's about honey bees. Let's finish the KWL chart
using the
information we just read and placing it under the "learned" column.
5.
Now
students will
each have a piece of their own paper and come up with a sentence to be
a main
topic sentence, show words that they thought were not important and
also words
or sentences that they thought were very important.
6.
To assess
them I will
take up their summaries. I will check them to see if they
followed the
rules and wrote information that goes with each topic. I will
also
observe them as they work. I will have a checklist of the key
points they
should pick out from the story. The checklist will include items
such as:
main characters, plot, conclusion, lesson learned. I will check off
things they
say and make note of any unimportant information they give me. I
will
also have the children tell their summary of the story to see how well
they
comprehended it.
References:
"Honey
Bee Mystery"
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Honey-bee-mystery
Reading Genie Website; Mandy Jones - "Let's
Summarize!" http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/jonesrl.html