Summarizing
Reading
to Learn
Rationale:
Comprehension is an important strategy for students to understand
as they read, but as they read they need to be able to point out
important facts about the story. Summarization can be defined as
finding the most important information from a reading. In this
lesson students will use their summarization skills by picking out main
events or ideas while reading a book. Students will follow the three
rules: delete trivia and redundancies, subordinate items and events,
find or compose a statement that covers everything.
Materials:
Procedures:
1.
I will explain what summarizing is and how we summarize what we read.
"Summarizing means that we write what happened in the story without
actually re-writing the whole story. In other words, you write only
about the big events that happened in a story. We will practice this
idea today."
2.
I will then introduce the magazine and discuss a little about what they
will be reading. "You will read this
article to yourself and after we will discuss the important events that
happened in the story as a class, then you will write a short summary
about the events in the article."
3.
I will pass out my extra copies to the rest of the class so that as
they write their summaries they can use the book as a reference.
4.
The students will write a small, one paragraph summary about the
article. I will remind them that the summary must be in complete
sentences, and remind them of the three rules (in simpler terms).
5.
After the students have finished I will ask a few students to read
their summary to the class. As a class we will make a map and discuss
what events or topics they could have included. I will ask the
following questions: "What factual information did you include in your
summary?" "Why was this information did you include in your summary?"
"If you read your summary could you tell another student the important
facts and only the important facts?"
6.
If time permits, the students will be allowed to draw their own picture
of the topic they read about to be hung up alongside their summary.
Assessment:
I will look at each student's summary and make sure that is in complete
sentences and that they only wrote about the big events in the story.
References:
Reading
Genie Website:
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie.html