Sum, Sum, Sum it up!
Reading to Learn
Rational:
This lesson teaches children about reading a text and summarizing it. In this
lesson students will read a text and summarize it using summarizing skills. The
goal is for students to recognize the important information in the text and
write a short summary about the text. Students will highlight important
information throughout the text and use these highlights to write a summary.
Materials: power point with summarization steps, highlighters, black marker, 2
articles for each student, pencils, paper
Procedures:
1. Today we are going to learn how to read a text and summarize it. What do you
think summarizing means? It means to tell the main points that are talked about
in a story in a few sentences. We want to learn to summarize because it makes us
better readers. If we can summarize we can understand and remember what we read.
Let me show you the steps of summarization.
2. We are going to learn a new word that will appear in the article:
1. Orangutans are a large ape with reddish hair, long arms, and hooked hands and
feet. Orangutans don’t look like elephants.
2. Orangutans look like monkeys.
3. Orangutans can live with tigers.
4. Orangutans are adaptive animals.
3. Pull up power point with steps, find out the main topic, find important
information, delete information that isn’t important, and take out repeated
information. Now let’s try as a class.
4 . Pass out article Tigers Cuddle with Apes. I want everyone to read through this article. Once everyone has read through we will discuss as a class. We need to find the topic of this story; it usually tells you the topic or what the story is about in the first sentence. Circle the topic with your pencil. Now we need to take our highlighters and highlight any facts that are important. Then we need to take our black marker and cross through details that don’t really matter or that are repeated. We want to make a general term that tells what the article is about.
5. Now that we know the topic and have the important things
highlighted we can begin summarizing. Remember a summary is only a few sentences
and doesn’t give many details.
6. First in the summary we need to know the topic of the
story. With the person next to you create a topic sentence. This is a sentence
telling what the story it about. For example if I was reading about panda bears
I might say, this article is about panda bears and how they live. After you have
a topic sentence, create 2 more sentences about the story that would sum up what
the story is about.
7. Once everyone has finished have the partners share with
the class. Discuss everyone’s summaries, have the class help each other if need
be. Now you try, on your own, with
this new article called The Secret
Language of Dolphins. Remember to use the same steps we did!
8. Assessment: Give each student the article
The Secret Language of Dolphins. Have
students write their own summary. I will leave the power point up for them to
reference. I will assess their summaries based on the chart/rubric below.
|
When summarizing, did the student… |
Yes |
No |
|
Delete unimportant information? |
||
|
Delete repeated information? |
||
|
Organize items with a big idea? |
||
|
Select a topic? |
||
|
Write an inclusive, simple topic sentence to
summarize the passage? |
I will ask students a few comprehension questions. What does the author want us
to know? How do dolphins communicate? How is their communication different from
humans communication?
References:
"Summing it up" by Jennifer Ivey
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/awakenings/iveyjrl.htm
http://www.wordcentral.com/cgi-bin/student?book=Student&va=summary
Tiger Cuddles
with Apes
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/tigers-cuddle-with-orangutans/
Picture:
http://bestclipartblog.com/31-book-clip-art.html/book-clip-art-12
Assessment: The Secret Language of
Dolphins
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/dolphin-language/