Be a Star Summarizer

Hayle Lipham

Reading to Learn Lesson Plan

Rationale:

Comprehension is the ultimate goal in reading instruction because people have to comprehend information that they read in order to recall it. There are various strategies that can be used to gain meaning and knowledge from text. A very helpful strategy is summarization. Fluent readers use summarization to understand text. Children need to be taught how to eliminate the trivial information and how to pick out what's important. In this lesson, students will learn the five steps of summarization which will allow then to summarize what they are reading.

Materials:

 -Copies of the article: "Elephants Recognize Selves in Mirror" by John Roach for each student

(found at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061030-asian-elephants.html)

-Poster with summarization rules on it:

 1.delete unimportant information

 2.delete repeated information

 3.substitute easy words for list items

 4.select a topic

 5.invent a topic sentence if there is not already one

-Poster with paragraph on it from "Gorilla Rescue" 

(found at http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Gorillarescue)

"The poachers—illegal hunters—had finally found a buyer for their stolen goods. A meeting was arranged, and when the buyer asked to see the merchandise, they brought out a small duffel bag and unzipped it. Inside was a terrified one-year-old baby gorilla."

-Dry erase board and marker

-Paper for each student

-Pencil for each student

-Highlighter for each student 

-Black marker for each student

-Summarization checklist for each student

Procedures:

Introduce the lesson explaining that we are going to learn a new comprehension strategy.  "Today, we are going to learn a new comprehension strategy that is called summarization.  It will help us understand the text that we are reading better. Does anyone know what the word summarization means?" "Good Job, that is correct." Summarization means to take the main or the most important ideas out of a passage.  When you summarize a passage, you understand and comprehend what you have read better."

Review the fluency strategies with all of the students. "Boys and Girls what do we do when we have trouble reading a word in a sentence?" "Good job of remembering!" That is right we use crosschecking.  We can crosscheck what we have read to make sure that the sentence makes sense. When I read the sentence, (write the sentence on the board, The little boy ate and ate) as The little boy at and at, then I could use my crosschecking skills to determine that the sentence does not make sense. I would reread my sentence correctly as The little boy ate and ate."

Display on the board the poster with the summarization rules written on it. We can use these summarizations rules written on this poster to help us comprehend and understand what we read."  Read the rules out loud to the students. Display the poster with the paragraph from the "Gorilla Rescue" article written on it. "I want you to read the paragraph on this poster from the article "Gorilla Rescue" silently to yourselves. I will give you about 10 minutes to read this article and then I will model how to use the summarization rules written on the poster board."

"Let's look at the paragraph from 'Gorilla Rescue' that is on the poster board." "I am going to read it to you, "The poachers—illegal hunters—had finally found a buyer for their stolen goods. A meeting was arranged, and when the buyer asked to see the merchandise, they brought out a small duffel bag and unzipped it. Inside was a terrified one-year-old baby gorilla." "The first rule states that we need to get delete unimportant information. "I am going to cross out with my black marker illegal hunters. Next, I am going to cross out …when the buyers asked to see the merchandise….and unzipped it.  I need to remember that the poachers had finally found a buyer for their stolen goods and a meeting was arranged and they brought out a small duffel bag and inside was a terrified one-year-old baby gorilla. The second rule is to delete the repeated information.  There is no repeated information in this passage. We can now go to rule number three which substitute easy words for list items.  I am going to highlight, "The poachers had finally found a buyer for their stolen goods,' and 'A meeting was arranged and they brought out a small duffel bag and inside was a terrified one-year-old baby gorilla.' These are the most important ideas in this passage. The next step is to decide on the topic of the passage, which is the baby gorilla.  The last step is to compile a topic sentence.  My topic statement is: 'The poachers had found a buyer for their stolen goods, arranged a meeting and showed them a terrified one-year-old baby gorilla.'  This is how you apply the summarization rules that are displayed on the board."

Pass out the article "Elephants Recognize Selves in Mirror" to each student.  "I have given each of you a copy of the article "Elephants Recognize Selves in Mirror." I want each of you to read it silently and then apply the summarization rules to summarize this passage." Provide an article talk: "Not only can humans see themselves in mirrors, but elephants can too. This study shows that these Asian Elephants can see themselves in a mirror; do you know what they do when they see themselves appear in a mirror?  Let's read the rest of the article to find out more interesting facts about these elephants.  Remember to use your markers to cross out the unimportant information and your highlighter to highlight the important information that you want to summarize.  After you have done this combine the important information into one topic sentence.  After everyone has completed their summarizations, we will all share them with the rest of the class."

Assessment:

For assessment use the checklist in the materials section to evaluate each of their summarizations.  Each child will be evaluated on their ability to delete the trivial and repeated information, find the important information, and create one topic and summarizing sentence. I will also ask questions pertaining to the text to the class to make sure that they comprehended and understood what they had read.

References:

Herring, Brittney. Spectacular Summarizers

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/voyages/herringrl.html

National Geographic for Kids (2008). Elephants Recognize Selves in Mirror.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061030-asian-elephants.html

National Geographic for Kids (2008). Gorilla Rescue

 http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Gorillarescue

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