Wild Animal Summaries!

Reading to Learn

Amanda Shankles

Rational:

The goal of reading instruction is individual comprehension and understanding. Students must learn strategic skills to help them in practicing their reading comprehension. In this lesson, students will use summarization strategies to write a summary of the passage given to them.

Materials:

• Baby tiger passage for each student
• Elephant passage for instruction
• Pencils for each student
• Individual animal passages for each student (can be the same or different)

Procedure:

1. “Who can tell me what a summary is?” (Allow students to answer) “That’s right, when we summarize we retell a story without telling them the whole story. Let’s see if we can learn some important strategies to write our own summaries.”
2. “Here I have a passage about an elephant. First I am going to read it silently to myself. Once I have done that, I am going to go back through the passage and pick out the important parts. (Go through the passage and underline the important parts…passage on smart board) Now that I have underlined the important parts, I am going to put them together in new sentences, which makes a summary of the whole passage. (Write out summary using the underlined important parts.)”
3. “Now let’s read this passage about baby tigers silently to ourselves. When you’re done reading to yourself, underline all the important parts of the passage.” (Allow time for students to read) “Now that everyone is finished reading and underlining, who can tell me one thing they underlined?” (Have several students answer while you underline them on the smart board in front of the class.) “Now let’s use these underlined words and phrases to write a summary of the passage.” (Ask for student’s thoughts about summarizing the passage. Work as a class to write a summary about baby tigers.)
4. “Now we are going to see if you can summarize on your own. Everyone has a different passage about animals. I want each person to use their summarizing strategies to summarize the passage. Once you are done, switch your summary with a partner and see if they can guess what your original passage is about.”
5. Give students time to read and summarize.

Assessment:

            Students will be assessed by turning in their summaries of each of their passages. Student partners will share what each others passage was about by reading each other’s summaries.

References:

• http://animal.discovery.com/guides/baby-animals/mammals/tiger.html (Tiger passage)
• http://animal.discovery.com/guides/baby-animals/mammals/african_elephant.html  (Elephant passage)
• http://animal.discovery.com/guides/baby-animals/baby-animals.html (Passages for summary assessment)
• Natasha Rosko, Sit Down and Read http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/encounters/roskorl.html