Summarizing with the Snakes!
Reading to
Learn
By : Laura Lee Nevins
Rationale: Comprehension is one of the most important
things to
teach to children while they are learning how to read. A good way
to help
children learn this is to teach them summarizing skills, which allow
them to
retain only the important ideas. To be able to read and recall
information from
text, children need instruction in summarization. By deleting
trivial
information, deleting redundant information and creating a topic
sentence,
students will be able to remember factual information better.
Materials:
Paper and
pencils for each
student
1. Pick out important details that are necessary to
the story
and highlight the key words.
2. Eliminate the parts of the passage that are not
important
to the main idea or information that is repeated. .
3. Pick a topic sentence out of the passage. Or,
write a
topic sentence if there is not one.
___ The student has a topic sentence.
___ There is no irrelevant, repeated information.
___ The student has included all important information in the summary.
Procedures:
I will begin the lesson by
explaining to the
students how important it is that we understand what we read. “Good
readers are
not only fluent when they read, but they also understand what they
read. This
is called comprehension (write the word on the board). When you
comprehend
something that means that you understand it. Ask the students “Who
can tell me what a summary is? Well, a summary can be written by
picking
out the main points in a story or passage. So,
in order to comprehend what you read we are going to learn how to
summarize, or
write a summary. Summarizing helps us pick out the important parts of
what you
are reading.”
There are three easy steps
to summarizing. I will now pass out
bookmarks
to each student, that have the three steps.
Now, look at your bookmark. The
three
steps to summarizing are:
1. Pick out
important details
that are necessary to the story and highlight the key words.
2. Eliminate the parts of the passage that are not
important
to the main idea or information that is repeated. .
3. Pick a topic sentence out of the passage. Or,
write a
topic sentence if there is not one.
Now
I will pass out a copy
of “Snake
Safari” by Rom Whitaker to each student. Then, I will give a booktalk
on the
article. Did you know that a king
cobra snake can be 18 feet long? Let’s read “Snake Safari” to find out
other
cool facts about snakes!
I
will put the article up on the overhead projector so that all of the
students
can see the article. I will read the first section of the article
aloud. Then,
I will highlight the important, key facts in the paragraph. “ Now
students let’s
read the paragraph and find the important facts, remember we do not
need to
know all the information.” Then, I will cross through the parts of the
article
that are not essential or are repeated. Finally, I will highlight the
topic
sentence. Then, I will use this information to write a summary. I will
put in
only the important facts as well as the topic sentence to the article.
Now I will have
the students read through the
second part of the article silently. When all the students are done
reading, I
will divide them into groups and let them write a summarization
paragraph
together. I will leave the copy of the first summarization paragraph on
the
overhead for a reference for them to look at. I will remind them to use
their
bookmarks for help.
Assessment:
The teacher will circulate
while the students are working, checking
each summary making sure that the students are using all the steps of
summarization. I will also be asking questions about the article to see
if they
comprehend, such as: how long can a kind cobra grow to be? Is a king
cobra the
largest snake? Use a checklist including the items:
Checklist:
___ The student has a topic sentence.
___ There is no irrelevant, repeated information.
___ The student has included all important information in the summary.
References:
Gamble, Beth. Super Space
Summarization. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/invent/gamblerl.html
Hood, Lara Lee. Ready Set,
Read! http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/sightings/hoodgf.html
Murray, Bruce. Developing
Reading Fluency
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/fluency.html
Whitaker,
Rom. “Snake Safari”. http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngexplorer/0409/articles/mainarticle.html