Sum It Up
Silly!!
Rationale:
After becoming a fluent reader, and moving on to more lengthy
reading material, it is important to develop summarization skills. In
learning
how to summarize, children will learn how to pick out important facts
which
will help them understand the text more clearly and deeply when
recalling the
story or article leading to better comprehension.
Materials:
Fish Face by Patricia Reilly Giff
Next Stop,
Paper
Pencils
A Highlighter
Dry Erase Board
Dry Erase Markers
Procedure:
1. Before beginning a new lesson today, lets get out
our book Next Stop,
2. The teacher will discuss the term summarization –
the
importance of picking important information out of the text. "If you
are
able to summarize what you read then you understand what is happening.
By
summarizing, you are forgetting the details and focusing on the main
parts, the
most important information of the text. Today we are going to learn how
to
summarize from the popular book, Fish Face by Patricia Reilly Giff.”
3. Introduce book to students by giving a book talk.
."The Book has a really funny title. What do you think it is
going
to be about? It is about a girl who looses her lucky unicorn and
thinks
that the new girl Dawn stole it from her. Dawn says that Emily
has a Fish
Face. Did Dawn really take Emily’s lucky unicorn?
4. Have children read the first chapter silently.
When
done reading, write on the board the three things to help you summarize:
1. No useless
information.
2. No redundant facts.
3. Form a topic
sentence from
important information.
5. Have a question and answer time by asking
specific
short answer comprehension questions such as: Who is the main
character? What
happened to Uni? Who is the new girl? Who is Emily’s best
friend?
Where does the story take place?
6. Teacher will read aloud the first page of Chapter
one.
Text is as follows:
“Give me a push, Beast,” Emily called to her best friend Richard Best.
“I think the bell rang,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder. “Just one more little push?”
Beast grabbed the edge of the swing.
He gave her a great push.
Emily sailed up high. She let her head fall back so she could see
the
sky.
“Everyone’s in line,” Jill Simon called from the monkey bars.
Emily slid off the swing and landed in a wet patch.
“Yucks,” she said. She watched the mud ooze up around her red
sneakers.
“We’re going to be late,” Jill told Emily.
Emily scraped her sneakers against the swing pole. “I’m coming.”
7. After reading, go back through the paragraph
and
point out the important parts. Have children highlight them.
"Look
at the first sentence. Is it important that we remember the main
characters
best friend – Richard Best or Beast? Highlight Beast, because his name
is
something important we need to remember." Continue through the
paragraph,
discussing sentence by sentence what is important. Weed through the
trivial
details.
7. Have someone read first paragraph of chapter two.
Make two
columns on the board- IMPORTANT and NON-IMPORTANT. Call on
students to go
through paragraph and list out the important things and trivial details
as a
class. "By looking at the IMPORTANT column, who can form one
topic
sentence to summarize the first paragraph? I want each of you to write
a topic
sentence on your paper." Have students share topic sentences.
8. Have children read the rest of Chapter two silently.
Have
children write on paper a summary of chapter that they have just read.
9. Assessment: Collect children’s papers and read over
summaries to
make sure children have grasped concept of summarization. Check for
topic
sentences and important information. Take off one point for each
trivial
detail listed.
References:
Giff, Patricia Reilly. Fish Face.
Giff, Patricia Reilly. Next Stop,
Pressley, Michael. Strategies That Improve Children's Memory and
Comprehension
of Text. The Elementary School Journal. Volume 90, no.1. 1989.
“Summing it all up in a Nutshell”
Misti Willoughby
Click
to return to Explorations.