Sum it Up!!
Rationale:
Students first learn how to read fluently and once they master fluent reading they need to make sure they comprehend what they read. One way to help students work on comprehension skills is to teach them how to summarize. Summarization should be taught through a series of rules so that students know exactly what they should do in order to summarize. These rules include picking out the important details, deleting repeated information or unimportant information, placing events and keywords in order, and creating a topic sentence to convey what the message of the text.
Materials:
Copy of Baby Boom! Giant Panada Cubs Give Hope to an Endangered Species for each student http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Stories/AnimalsNature/Giantpandacubs
Notebook Paper
Pencils
Highlighters
Butcher paper
Book mark with the 5 Summarizing Rules for each student
Procedure:
1. Review silent reading with students. Ask "Who
remembers what silent reading is? That's right. It is when you read to
yourself
in your head but not out loud. Why do
you read silently? Right, sometimes we're in places where we have to be
quiet
when we're reading. Even though we read
silently we still need to make sure that we understand what we are
reading. One way to do this is to
summarize what we
read. When you summarize your version of
what you read will be shorter than the actual passage or story. Today
I'm going
to tell you some ways that will help you summarize."
2. Have the steps to summarize written on the
board for all
students to see. "There are five
steps to summarize. First, you pick out all the important details. Second, you find details that are repeated or
that are not important to the text and get rid of them.
Third, you use key words to highlight the
important details. Fourth, you put the
key words in order as they appear in the passage. Fifth
and lastly, you use the key words list
to make a topic sentence."
3. "Now we're going to read an article about panda
cubs
to practice our summarizing skills." Hand out the article and book mark
to
each of the students.
4. "Pandas are an endangered animal which means
there
aren't many of them alive anymore. Since they are endangered, people
work every
hard to help make sure that pandas are protected. This article we are
going to
read is going to tell us about how some people are working to protect
the
pandas."
5. Have students read the article silently paying
attention
to what they think is important to the article. Once students finish
reading,
tell them you are going to model how to summarize the first two
paragraphs of
the article.
6. Read the first two paragraphs out loud with the
class
then summarize them. "First I found the important details. Then, I made
sure that I didn't include any extra information that really isn't
important.
Now, I'm going to write down the key words on the board. Then I will
make a
topic sentence." Then I will read the topic sentence.
7. Pass out highlighters to students and have them
reread
the article highlighting the most important information from the
article.
8. Next, I will model for students how to create a
web to
help them create a paragraph about the article. "Now we're going to
talk
about what we just read. We're going to
use a web to help us organize our summaries to make a paragraph."
9. Use butcher paper to create web on board for
all students
to see. Explain that the main topic of
the paragraph will go in the middle. Then to add the details you draw a
line
from the main idea to write the supporting details next to it.
10. Then split students into groups of 3 to have
them
summarize the panda article. "Now
each group is going to look at what you highlighted and summarize the
article
together. You might not have all
highlighted the same things so talk about what each of you highlighted
to
decide what really is the most important to understanding the article.
Make
sure to use your book marks so that you include all the steps when
summarizing.
After you decide what's most important make a web as a group and then
write
each of you will write a paragraph to turn in."
Assessment:
Students will turn in their summaries and the summaries will be graded on their ability to follow the five steps of summarizing and they will also have to turn in the web they created as a group. Students will also be assessed on how well they work in their groups.
References: