Well, to Make a Long Story Short…
Reading to Learn
Rationale:
The goal of reading is comprehension. In order for students to develop
good comprehension, they must have comprehension strategies. Summarization
is an important skill for reading and it simply means that you are taking out
all of the small details and focusing on the main ideas of the passage.
This lesson is designed to help students develop their summarization skills and
helping them derive meaning and understanding from the texts they read.
Students will be able comprehend the meaning within the text and organize it in
an informative way. They will do this by learning how to identify the
important ideas and key details needed while eliminating the unnecessary
details. After understanding and highlighting important parts throughout
the paragraph needed to comprehend the reading, students will learn how to
organize the parts into sentences that will shorten the reading.
Materials:
-Poster with summarization rules on it
1. Delete trivial information
2. Delete redundant information
3. Generate a topic sentence that captures the gist
of the text
-Black marker for each student
-Highlighter for each student
-Poster with "Chipmunks" article on it
-Copy of "Flamingos" passage for each student
-Summarization checklist:
|
Did the Student . . . |
Yes |
No |
|
Delete trivial information? |
|
|
|
Delete redundant information? |
|
|
|
Generate a topic sentence that captures the gist
of the text? |
|
|
Procedures:
1. I will introduce the lesson by telling the students that
we are going to learn how to summarizations.
"Today we are going to be learning about
a really helpful strategy to use while reading, called summarization. Can
anyone tell me what summarization is? Summarization means to take all of
the important ideas out of the passage to get the main idea. "
2. I will begin the lesson by reviewing some important
vocabulary words. "Let's review one more
thing before we get started. I want to review some vocabulary with you all."
Write the following words on the white board: Webbed, Lagoon, Flocks, Organisms.
"Let's look
at the words "webbed". Webbed feet mean that a bird or duck has folds of skin
between their toes. This helps them swim. Finish this sentence for me: Ducks
have webbed feet to help them
______.
Webbed means there is _____ between their toes."
Continue in this fashion with the rest of the vocabulary list.
3. After we review the vocabulary I will display the poster
with the summarization rules on it. I will then read and explain the rules
to the students. "These are the rules
that we are going to use to summarize passages that we read. They will
help you to better understand the text. The first rule is to delete trivial
information. Second is to delete redundant information. If you see a fact two or
more times, we need to just go ahead and eliminate it because we already know
that. Once we remove the trivial and redundant information, the remaining
information will be the important idea. Third is to generate a topic sentence.
This is so easy. It means you pick what the article is about. Our article is
going to be about chipmunks. Then you make that topic into a sentence to start
our paragraph off right. We would say, "This article is about Chipmunks." Does
anyone have any questions about the summarization rules?"
4. Next I will model how to use the summarization rules.
Direct the students' attention to the poster with the "Chipmunks" paragraph on
it. "I am going to show you how to
use these summarization rules as you read. I am going to read this
paragraph and I want you to follow along with me silently. Then we will
write a topic sentence and summary of this article together."
5. Read the paragraph aloud:
"Chipmunks are part of the squirrel
family, and while they look similar to their bushy-tailed cousins, chipmunks are
actually smaller, with alternating light and dark stripes along their cheeks and
backs." After reading the passage aloud, model how to go through the
summarization checklist. "Okay, now that we have read the passage, let's
summarize it together using our summarization checklist. The first rule
says to get rid of all of the trivial information. To get rid of the
trivial information, we are going to cross it out with our black markers.
First I am going to mark out "while they look similar to their bushy-tailed
cousins, chipmunks are actually smaller" because this part is pretty much common
sense. We know that chipmunks are smaller than squirrels." It is important
to remember that Chipmunks are part of the squirrel family and they have
distinct markings. The next step is to delete any repeated information.
There is no repeated information in this passage, so we can go on to the next
step. Now we need to decide on the subject of this passage, which are chipmunks,
and write a topic sentence. The topic sentence that I am going to write
for this passage is "Chipmunks are part of the squirrel family and have
alternating light and dark stripes along their cheeks and backs." This is how we
use the summarization rules to get the important facts from the passage."
6. "Now that you
have seen how to use the summarization rules, I want you to practice doing one
on your own. Please get out a sheet of paper and a pencil. I am going to
give you an article called "Flamingos". This is going to tell us about
Flamingos, their habitat, and their food preferences. You may find out something
very interesting that you didn't know about these creatures. I want you to read
it silently to yourself and use the tools that I have given you, as well as the
summarization rules to summarize the passage." When the students have
summarized, ask them the following questions to check for comprehension:
1. Why do
flamingos have webbed feet? What do they use them for?
2. Would Flamingos be more likely to be found in Canada or South America?
3. Why does the baby Flamingo need its parents?
7. For the assessment portion of this lesson, I will use the same summarization
rules checklist that is included in the materials section of this lesson plan.
Students will be evaluated on their ability to delete trivial information as
well as the repeated information, find the important information, and create one
topic sentence.
8. Finally I will ask for volunteers to share their summaries and generate a
class discussion to be sure that all of the students have comprehended what they
have read.
References:
-National Geographic Articles:
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/creaturefeature/chipmunks/
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/creaturefeature/flamingos/
-Reading Genie:
"To Make a LONG Story SHORT" by DeDe Caroll
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/awakenings/carrollrl.htm
Return to the Epiphanies index