Summarizing is the key to Success!
By: Caroline Duffy
Rationale:
The overall goal of this lesson is for students to learn new information from
what they are reading. In order for
this to happen students must interpret text through a series of processes.
In this lesson, the students will focus on learning how to summarize a
piece of text. The students will
accomplish the goal of the lesson through breaking down summarization into
different steps. The students will
also experience learning through teacher modeling and student practice.
Furthermore, the students will participate in a vocabulary review that
will help them to learn how to identify difficult words and be prepared for the
reading. Lastly, they will answer
good questions about the text that will help them in their overall goal of
learning from reading.
Materials:
Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business (enough copies for the
entire class), paper and pencils (for every student in the class), whiteboard,
dry erase marker, a typed up copy of the assessment assignment and questions
(enough for every student in the class), and
A copy of Making Sight Words as a
reference for the teacher (optional).
Procedures:
1.
Say: The goal of reading is to get the messages encoded in texts, enjoy them,
learn from them and assess their importance.
In order to learn from what you read you must know how to mentally
complete several processes. In
today’s lesson, we are going to accomplish learning to successfully summarize a
piece of text. In order to
successfully summarize a text there are several rules you must follow.
2.
Say: In order to summarize a piece of text first must have a text to summarize.
Today, we will be working together to summarize chapter 1 out of the book
Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business, by Barbara Park.
3.
Say: Before we begin the reading we will have a vocabulary review.
This review will prepare you to better understand the reading and make
your ability to summarize stronger.
Also, this vocabulary review will help you to learn how to better identify, use,
and commit to memory challenging words.
4.
Next, write the vocabulary words on the board in a horizontal line.
The vocabulary words for this lesson are apology, freshener, present and
surprise. Make sure there are
spaces between each word and room to write under each word.
It may be easiest to create a box to avoid confusion for the students.
Also, under each word write locate, relate, extricate, and generate.
You will also want to leave room between these words so that you can
write by each step. Number the steps in order from 1-4.
Now begin the vocabulary review by
modeling all of the steps for the word apology.
As each step is explained write out what you come up with for each one
with the corresponding term.
5. Say: When you want to learn more information about a challenging word there are four steps you can follow that will help you to better understand the word and commit it to your long term memory. This review can take place before or after a reading. Today, it is going to take place before so that our understanding of the reading can be as successful as possible. However, when doing a review on your own it will most likely be more beneficial after the reading. Our first word is apology. First, I am going to locate the word. This means I am going to find an example of the word that means the same thing; My friend said she was sorry for stepping on my foot. In this sentence I used the word sorry as an example for apology. Next, I am going to relate the word to other words that are similar in meaning, which for this term I can relate it to the words excuse, justify, and sorry. Now, that I know apology can be used as saying sorry to someone for what you did I am going to use it in another context to know that I have a good understanding of the word. In his speech he used an apology to defend his story. Finally, I am going to test myself on my understanding of the word by using it in a new sentence. I gave an apology to my friends for being late to dinner because they had on wait on me.
6.
Say: Now that you have an understanding of how to learn vocabulary words we are
going to do the next two words together.
During this portion of the lesson ask the students for answers for each
step of the process. If they are
not able to give you accurate answers then make sure to model how to find them.
After working together for the words freshener and present tell the
students that they are to complete the same process on their own for the word
surprise. While the students are working walk around the room to see how they
are doing and answer any questions they may have.
When they are finished review each step for the word surprise as a whole
group.
7.
Say: For the next part of the lesson we are going to read chapter one of
Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business.
Before beginning to read the story give the students a brief overview of
what the story is about. This is
similar to a book talk but on a more board scale.
Tell the students that we will be reading about a Junie B. Jones
adventure. In this story, Junie
B. learns that she will be having a new sibling.
Throughout the story, you will see what Junie B. endures as she
awaits for the arrival of her new sibling.
The teacher will read the story aloud to the students.
As the story is being read the teacher will ask students questions that
will activate background knowledge, integrate different ideas, and capture large
blocks of information. It is important to read
the passage prior to the lesson so you can prepare the questions you want to ask
your students. She will model reading fluently and with expression.
Tell the students that during the reading they need to be focusing on the
content of the story because it will help them in completing the steps of
summarization. Then, explain to
them that listening to the content will help them to comprehend the text.
Paying close attention to the content will allow for successful reading
comprehension, which will allow the students to understand what is happening in
the text so that they can complete the steps of summarization.
These steps include deleting unimportant information, generalizing terms,
and creating a sentence that sums up the main idea.
8.
Say: Now that we have a piece of text to summarize we are going to learn about
the steps we have to follow.
Summarization can be broken down into three smaller steps.
Once all the steps have been completed we will have a clear understanding
of what happened in the chapter and a topic sentence that captures all the main
ideas of the selected text.
9.
Say: The first step in summarization is clearing away the trivial and redundant
information that is not worth remembering. Looking back in the text and noting
important information and ideas from each page can complete this step.
Tell the students to look at chapter one from their copy of the book.
Ask the students to raise their hands to share ideas and important
information from the story. Once
the students have volunteered answers go through each one.
Before moving on to the next step make sure the following ideas are
present: Junie B.’s parents have a surprise for her, she thinks the surprise is
a present, she learns that the surprise is that she is going to have a sibling,
she is upset by the news, and she makes a compromise over air freshener.
If there is extra information given by the students you can scaffold the
students by asking them questions about whether this information is actually
valuable to the summary. If they
say yes, ask them to tell you how.
Also, if the students are not providing good important information you can
scaffold their thinking with good questions.
You may ask: What was Junie B’s surprise? How did Junie B. react to her
surprise? How do you think Junie B. was feeling about the surprise by the end of
the chapter? Once the students have
established the important ideas and removed trivial information move on to the
next step.
10.
Say: The second step in summarization is finding umbrella terms that cover
multiple items or events. For
example animals would be an umbrella term for dog, cat, and horse.
Now ask the students to look back at the main ideas they have established
and see if they can come up with any umbrella terms to make the main ideas more
compact. Write down all of the
examples that the students give.
Once all student answers have been volunteered review each one with the class to
see if it fits or not. Before
moving onto the next step make sure the following terms are covered: siblings
for brother and sister, surprise for present and baby on the way.
With this particular text this step may not have a lot of umbrella terms.
This is okay because the students will still be able to make a successful
summary of the text. If the
students have a hard time coming up with umbrella terms you may scaffold their
thinking by asking them questions similar to the following: Is there a way to
break down brother and sister so that it is only one word? What do you think
about the word surprise? Could that be an umbrella word in itself? If yes, how?
11.
Say:
The final step in summarizing a piece of information is creating a topic
sentence that covers all the main ideas of the text in a few words.
In order to do this we can use the main ideas and umbrella terms that we
have identified to complete this step.
Before creating the sentence explain a good strategy for creating topic
sentences. Tell them that the best
way to make a sentence is to first write down the topic to be used as the
subject. Then create a predicate
that captures all of the main ideas we have established. Now give them an
example that they will be able to understand. For example if we read a text
about all the different animals and what noises they make I could create the
following topic sentence: All animals make noises that are unique to their
individual animal type. At this
point, you can break the class into groups. If they are in tables working with
their table will be the easiest.
Have each group come up with their own topic sentence about the chapter.
Have all groups share their sentence with the class.
After analyzing each group work as a class to use parts of each sentence
to make up the ultimate topic sentence.
The final product of this step will allow understanding of the overall
gist of this piece of text. Also,
if this is done with each chapter you it will give you an understandable
complete summary of the entire text, which is helpful in learning from reading.
12.
The last part of this lesson will assess their understanding of the content and
their ability to apply all the steps discussed to learn from what they read.
Since the lesson is a bit long if there is not enough time to complete
the activity in class the students may complete it at another part of the day or
that night for homework and then turn it in the next day. The students will read
chapter two in their copy of the book.
Then, we will be asked to follow each summarization step so that they are
able to create a concrete topic sentence for chapter two of the text.
For the activity, each step in the summarization process must be
documented. Also, the students must answer the following questions:
What was Junie B.'s surprise? At first, how does Junie B. feel about her
surprise? After chapter two how does Junie B. feel about her surprise? Can
you relate what Junie B. is going through to something in your life? How?
The teacher will collect the
activity from each student to assess their understanding of summarization, story
comprehension and to see if they were able to accomplish the overall goal of
learning from their reading.
The below table can be used to assess the students assessment activity.
Rubric Checklist
| Summarization Rules: | There is no attempt made at completing the step | The student attempted to follow the step but the information is incorrect | The student understands the rule and the text but the answer is not concrete | The student successfully completed the rule and it is evident they have a concrete understanding applying the text to the rule |
| 1. Deleting trivial text | ||||
| 2. Categorizing related words into umbrella terms | ||||
| 3. Main idea sentence | ||||
| Comprehension Questions: | There is no attempt made at answering the question | The student answers the questions but it is incorrect; it is clear the student did not comprehend the text | The student correctly answered the question but there could be more depth to the answer | The student correctly and thoroughly answered all parts of the question |
| 1. What was Junie B.'s surprise | ||||
| 2. At first, how does Junie B. feel about her surprise? | ||||
| 3. After chapter 2 how does Junie B. feel about her surprise? | ||||
| 4. Can you relate what Junie. B is going through to an event in your life? How? |
Reference:
Murray, Bruce. Making Sight Words.
Linus Publications. Ronkonkoma, NY 2012. Pg. 193-212.