Sum
it Up!
Reading to Learn
Teaching Summarization to Help Students Comprehend Reading Passages
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 comprehend text is to summarize. To be able to read and
recall
information from text, children need instruction in
summarization. By
deleting trivial information, deleting redundant information,
substituting sup
ordinate terms for a list of items, and creating a topic sentence,
students
will be able to remember factual information better.
Materials:
Sentence strips with six different steps for summarizing written on them
Deleted unimportant information:
yes
or no
Selected repeated information:
yes or no
Substituted easy terms for lists of
items:
yes or
no
Added a series of events with an easy
action term:
yes or no
Selected a
topic: yes
or no
Invented a topic sentence if there was
none:
yes or no
Overhead copy of Life in a Deep
Freeze
1 copy for each student of Life
in a Deep Freeze
1 copy for each student of A
Bear of a Job
Dry Erase Boards and Markers
Procedures:
Start by reviewing how to read silently and introduce the first story.
"Have you ever tried to do something new, like building something, and
made mistakes when you were learning? Today we are going to read
a story
about learning to do something new. First, before we start
reading, I
would like to review how to read silently. Watch me as I read
silently." I will read the first page of the story to myself.
"Now I am going to pass out Life in
a Deep Freeze and I would like for each of you to read the title
and the
story to yourself. I should not hear anyone making a sound.
I want
to see your eyes following along as you read."
"You all did a great job of reading silently! Now we are going to
learn how to summarize the story. 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. There are six different steps to keep in mind
when you
are summarizing." Have each of these six steps written on
sentence
strips and post them on the board as they are described and discussed.
Delete unimportant information
Delete repeated information
Substitute easy terms for lists of items
Add a series of events with an easy action term
Select a topic
Invent a topic sentence if there is none
Explain to the children how to
use mapping as
a strategy. "A great way to summarize a piece of literature is to use a
skill called mapping. When we map a story or passage we put the
main idea
or topic in a middle circle and the supporting details around the
outside like
antennae." On the board, model making a map for summarizing. Have
the students contribute ideas for beginning to fill in the story map by
asking
questions. "The middle circle will be what? The topic,
very
good. What is the topic of our article? So this will be our
center
circle. Now we will add ideas to the antennae coming out from our
circle,
which will describe some important ideas. What is something
described in
the story? In order to keep adding on to the map we will need to
continue
to come up with some more important information from the story. Can you
tell me
another important idea that we can put on the antenna? "At this point
the
teacher will guide the students to add only important ideas. When the
class is
satisfied that they have just the important facts the teacher will
write all of
the important details in complete sentences, forming a summative
paragraph
about the story.
The next step will be to divide
the class
into small groups, give them small dry erase boards and have them
repeat the
same process that was modeled in the above steps. Give the
children A Bear of a Job to read. Instruct
students to make a summarization map of the passage on their dry erase
boards
and write a summarization paragraph, using their map. Allow the group's
time to
read silently and then construct the story maps.
Assessment:
Circulate while the students are
working,
Check each map and summary making sure that the students are using all
six
steps of summarization. Use a checklist including the items:
Deleted unimportant information:
yes or no
Deleted repeated information:
yes
or no
Substituted easy terms for lists of
items:
yes or no
Added a series of events with an easy action term:
yes or no
Selected a
topic:
yes or no
Invented a topic sentence if there was
none:
yes or no
References:
Olk, Katie.
Carving Out A Story. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/voyages/olkrl.html
Strategies That Improve
Children's Memory and Comprehension of Text by Michael Pressley
Markle, Sandra. Life in a Deep Freeze. National Geographic for Kids (December 2002).
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngexplorer/0211/articles/mainarticle.html
Winkler, Peter. A Bear of a Job. National Geographic for Kids (November-December 2001)
http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngexplorer.com/0110/articles/aboaj0111.html
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