Get
to the Point
Reading
to Learn
Rational:
After children learn how
to read, they need to learn how to
comprehend what they have read. They can
do this through learning how to summarize what they have read. Learning what is important to remember can be
difficult. However, everyone can learn
how to summarize and comprehend. This
lesson
focuses on learning how to comprehend well and summarize.
Children will be able to pick out important
information from the text that they have read.
Materials:
Bookmark
with summarizing tips:
Pick
out important facts.
Remove information that
is not very useful, or that does not back up
topic sentences.
Pick out repeated ideas
and delete them.
Pick out a topic
sentence.
One copy of National Geographic
article for each child.
Pencil
Paper
Highlighter
Procedures:
1.Explain
what
summarizing and comprehension are. "Has
anyone ever heard of the word summary? Can you tell me what it is? Yes,
summarizing is when you read a story or article and can remember
important
facts from it. When we summarize
something that we have read, we only pick out the important things that
we need
to remember."
2.Next
we will
talk about the summarizing strategies that are on the bookmark. "Can someone read the first step to
summarizing? How can we show what
sentences or facts are important? Yes,
we can use our highlighter." We will
continue to go over the other three steps.
3.Next
we will
take out the National Geographic articles.
They will follow along as I read the article.
I will model fluent reading along with
comprehension skills. "National
Geographic News says that, according to the International Astronomical
Union, a
full-fledged planet is an object that orbits the sun and is large
enough to
have become round due to the force of its own gravity. Because Pluto
doesn't
meet these standards, the IAU classifies Pluto as a dwarf planet. After reading this paragraph, what is
something important for us to remember? I
think that the words dwarf planets are important, and I am going to use
my
highlighter and highlight just those two words.
Now you read the rest of the article on your own and pick out
some
important facts. Remember to use your
highlighter to make those important facts stand out."
4.After everyone is
finished reading the article, we will come back together as a class and
choose
the most important facts. Once that is
done, we will make up four sentences that describe the whole article. These four sentences will be the summary.
Assessment:
Have
students pick out an article on
their own, something that they are interested in. Students
should highlight the important
things in the article and write a short summary of the things
highlighted. This will show me that they
know who to read,
comprehend, and summarize.
References:
Summing
It
up by Laura Ashley Norman
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/voyages/normanrl.html
National
Geographic Article
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/SpaceScience/Pluto-planet