Summing It Up!!
Brittney McKissick
Rationale: It is important to teach students comprehension strategies, while they are learning to read. They need to learn how to remember what happened while they read, rather than just reading. One effective comprehension strategy is summarization. Summarization involves five steps that help students locate and remember important information in a text. The five steps are delete unimportant information, delete repeated information, substitute easy terms for lists of items, substitute a series of events with one easy action term, and select/invent a topic sentence.
Goal: In this lesson, students will learn how to use these five steps to summarize the text they read. After the students learn how to summarize by using these five steps, they will be able to summarize anything that they read.
Materials:
1. Marker board
2. Markers
3. 1 highlighter for
teacher and each student
4. Paper
5. Pencil
6. Checklist listed below
7. The fish article (found at:
http://fishnkids.dpi.nsw.gov.au/learn/learn-what.html
)on a transparency for an overhead projector or available to show
on the
smartboard
8. Overhead
projector, if you do not have a smartboard
Sample Checklist:
1. Removed
unimportant/ repeated information
Yes
O No O
2. Topic sentence given
Yes
O No O
3. Only
used main points
Yes O No O
4. Created easy terms
to classify items
Yes O No O
Procedures:
1. Begin by asking, "Can
anyone tell me what it means to read
silently?" Allow several
students to answer. That is a
great answer! It means
that we read the words with our eyes, but we do not say anything with
our mouth. Does
anyone know why it is important for us to read silently? Another
great answer! It helps us to remember
what we read. Today, we are going to read
silently, and then, we are going to learn how to summarize what we read.
2. Talk with the
students about what it means to summarize something, and go over the
five steps
involved. Can anyone tell me
what it means to summarize? Allow several students to respond. Good
job! It means to tell a shorter version
of a story, only including the important parts.
When we summarize, we will follow five basic steps.
Write the steps on the board for the
students to refer back to. The
five basic steps we use to summarize are
delete unimportant information, delete repeated information, substitute
easy
terms for lists of items, substitute a series of events with one easy
action
term, and select/invent a topic sentence.
3. Now I
am going to pass out a copy of a
passage about fish. This passage talks
about the body of a fish and how they live.
How do fish survive underwater all of the time?
To find out, you will have to read this
passage. When you are finished reading,
turn your paper over, so I will know when everyone is finished reading.
4. I am
going to show you have to summarize this
passage by using the five steps. Put
the passage up on the overhead or smartboard.
Highlight the most important parts as you read the paragraph
about the
fish's bodies out loud. Tell the
students your thinking process as you model for them.
Let the students know why you are
highlighting certain information, such as I
highlight the parts I want to remember.
They are important or interesting.
I am going to highlight gills because that is how fish breathe. Next, I am going to highlight fins and tail
because this is how the fish move through the water.
Scales is also important for fish because it protects
them from danger. An example of a
summary for the first section is: Fish
have many body parts that are different from humans that help them
survive in
the water.
5. Give all of the
students a highlighter. Now, I
am going to let you practice
summarizing. Read the paragraph about
how fish live. When you are finished,
write
your summary on a piece of paper. Make
sure you follow all five steps. Walk
around to help guide the students as they work.
When the students are finished, discuss the summaries that
everyone came
up with, and how they used the five steps.
An example of a summary is:
Raccoons are unique animals that eat both plants and animals,
and they
are primarily active at night.
Assessment:
Give the students the second article (only the paragraph
about "The Basics" about raccoons).
Give them this brief book talk: Have you ever wondered where the name
raccoon came from? Did you know what a
raccoon eats? What is the life span of a
raccoon? To find the answers to these
questions and more, you will have to read this article.
Make sure you read this article silently. Then,
write a summary using the five
steps. Turn your summary in.
The teacher will assess the summary by
using a checklist.
References:
1. Shumock,
Emily. "Ready to Summarize."
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/encounters/shumockrl.html
2. It Looked Good on Paper, Inc. "The Basics." http://www.isleauhaut.net/racgallery/racfaq.htm#basics
3. Fish 'n' Kids. "What
a fish?"
http://fishnkids.dpi.nsw.gov.au/learn/learn-what.html