Let's Summarize!



Reading to Learn

By: Mandy Jones

 

Rationale: Reading comprehension is the main goal of reading instruction and is imperative for understanding the text. The goal of this lesson is to provide children with the summarization strategy so that they can read to learn. Summarization can help children gather and concentrate on the important facts of the text. The activities in this lesson will allow children to summarize the text in their own words; therefore, they will gain a better understanding of the text.

 

Materials:

Summarization Rules written on board:

            1. Pick out the most important information and highlight the key words.

            2. Pick out less important information.

            3. Substitute a series of events for a list of items.

            4. Add a series of events with an easy action term.

            5. Write a sentence that covers everything that is important information from the passage.

            6. Invent a topic sentence if there is not one.

 

Printed copies of National Geographic Kids articles for each student:

            "The Original 7 Wonders of the World": http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/History/Ancient-wonders

            "The Facts on Fish": http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/SpaceScience/Facts-on-fish

 

Notebook paper

 

Pencils

 

Highlighters

 

Assessment checklist:

Did the Student

Yes

No

Pick out important info.

 

 

Write a sentence that covers important information from the passage.

 

 

 

Procedures:

1. Begin with a class discussion of the meaning of comprehension. "Comprehension means that we understand what we read and are able to remember it after we are done reading. Today we will learn a strategy that will help us to understand what we read. This new strategy is called summarization. Being able to summarize can help us pick out the most important information from the text that we need to remember."

 

2. Explain summarization. "There are 6 steps to remember when summarizing." (Write the 6 steps on the board as each one is announced). "The first step is to find the most important information that is necessary to the text. You can use your highlighters to mark the important details. The second step is to make sure you pick out the information that is not as important to the story. You need to do this to make sure you are only focusing on the most important details. Next, we make a list of the important details that we have found. The fourth step is to make a series of events with the information you have found. Step 5 says to write a sentence that covers all off the important information that you have gathered from the passage. Last, you should come up with a topic sentence if there is not already one.

 

3. Pass out the article "The Original 7 Wonders of the World" to each student. "Each of you will have an article to practice summarizing with. We will read the article and follow the steps in order to summarize correctly. Remember when you summarize, you need to pick out the most important information in the passage."

 

4. After the students have read the article, we will go through the steps and summarize the article together. I will model how to pick out the important information by using a highlighter. "Ok kids, whenever you come across something that you think is important in the passage you highlight it." I will also model how to avoid less important or repeated information by crossing it out with a pen. "Remember whenever you see information that is repeated or is not important, you cross it out." I will then have students compare their summaries to ours as a whole to see if they got anything different.

 

5. "Now that you understand how to summarize an article, you will have the chance to practice with another one. (I will then pass out a copy of "Facts on Fish" to each child). I will give them an interesting "booktalk" about the article. Example: This article talks about the good and bad things that can come from fish. Some fish is not good for you to eat because it contains bad chemicals that can harm you. On the other hand, there are also a lot of good things about eating fish that can be very healthy. You'll have to read the article to see which things are good and which things are bad."

 

6. After students summarize the second article, they will pair up and discuss their summarizations with each other. "When you are done summarizing, I want each of you to pair up with the person beside you to talk about what you summarized."

 

Assessment: I will come around the room with a checklist for each student to assess their summarizations while they are discussing in pairs.

 

References:

National Geographic Kids. 2008. http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/

 

- "The Original 7 Wonders of the World": http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/History/Ancient-wonders

            - "The Facts on Fish": http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/SpaceScience/Facts-on-fish

 

Lesson Design by Maribeth Ward. Sum Sum Summarize!

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/encounters/wardrl.html

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