Reading to Learn

Reading to Learn Lesson Design

Splashing through Summaries

A Reading to Learn Lesson Design

By: Anna Knowling

Rationale: In order for a child to become a skilled reader, it is important that they comprehend the information they are reading. A great strategy that will aid children with comprehension is summarization. Summarization refers to the process of being able to pick out small details and focus on the main ideas in a text. This process shortens the text and eventually creates a summary. Throughout this lesson, students will get the chance to learn summarization strategies and be able to apply their knowledge through short passages provided by the teacher.

Materials:

-Poster with summarization rules listed:

1. Get rid of unimportant information.

2. Get rid of repeated information.

3. Substitute umbrella words for list words.

4. Select a topic.

5. Make up a topic sentence if there is not one.

-Paper & pencils

-Highlighters & red marker for each student

-Poster of "The Secret Language of Dolphins"

-Copy of "Polar Bears Listed As Threatened" for each student

-Summarization Checklist

Procedures:

1. Say: "Today we are going to learn how to summarize when we read. When we summarize it helps us understand what we are reading better. When you hear the word summarize, what do you think it means? Let them answer. That’s right! Summarization is when you read a passage or a section of text and take all the small details so that you are left with the main idea of the text. Ok, so first thing we are going to do is review some information we have learned about reading. After that, we will talk more about what it means to summarize a piece of text and learn some of the rules of summarizing.”

2. Start the lesson by reviewing some of the vocabulary in the article.

Say: “Good morning everybody! Today we are going to be reading about Dolphins. In the article, there will be some words that you might not recognize. It’s okay though because we are going to learn all about them. So, before we start reading, let’s talk about these unfamiliar words and what they mean, so when you see them in the text you will know what it means. The words we are going to go over are: gesture, scuffle, nuance, and elusiveness.” Define each of these words in the following way:

The first word we are going to talk about is gesture. A gesture is known as a movement of a body part that is used to help express an idea or meaning. For example, if I say “Abby please go to my desk and grab me a piece of tape” I would use my hand to point towards my desk. That is an example of a gesture. Now let’s come up with another sentence. The woman on the sidewalk gestured for a taxicab! Another way it can be used is: After Dave scored a goal at the soccer game, Dave’s dad gestured a thumbs up. An example of a way gesture would not be used is: Liz gestured at Cam by looking in her direction. This is not a good example because Liz is trying to describe an entire idea as oppose to using a gesture to help express her idea. Cam can’t read Liz’s mind so she has to speak words or use some kind of gesture to give Cam an idea of what she is trying to say. A gesture is any movement that can express meaning to someone else. For example, a thumbs up. By doing this to someone, they understand what you mean without even having to use words. Now, I am going to provide a sentence and I want someone to raise their hand and tell me what gesture they think would be used in the sentence. If Adam were leaving his friend Joe, what would be a gesture he might use? Let students provide answer. Great job! Adam would wave goodbye to Joe, which let’s Joe know he was leaving. Hopefully now everyone has a better understanding of the word gesture. I know want each of you to try and come up with your own sentence using gesture.

3. Next, have the poster displayed at the front of the room and explain the summarization rules. Discuss each rule for them in a real paragraph. Provide an explanation as to how each rule is going to help them summarize their reading.

4. Read the following paragraph from "The Secret Language of Dolphins" to the students and model how to summarize.

Say: "Here is a paragraph from an article from National Geographic Kids called 'The Secret Language of Dolphins'. Has anyone ever heard of it before? Let them answer if they have and then continue. Okay, now I am going to read this paragraph aloud. I want everyone to follow along silently as I read a passage from the book.

'In many ways, you are just like the more than 30 species of dolphins that swim in the world's oceans and rivers. Dolphins are mammals, like you are, and must swim to the surface to breathe air. Just as you might, they team up in pods, or groups, to accomplish tasks. And they're smart.'

Okay, now let's take a look at this paragraph. What is the first rule on our chart say to do? Let them provide answer. Right! It says to get rid of unimportant information. So the first thing I am going to do is take my big red marker and cross out all the unimportant information. Does anybody think the first sentence is important? Let them provide answer again. You’re right! So I am going to cross out the entire first sentence. It's good to know that there are many different types of dolphins but it’s not that important when we are talking about a dolphin’s language. We also need to cross out 'like you are' after 'mammals' in the second sentence since we know that humans are in fact mammals. What about in the third sentence? Is ‘just as you might’ and ‘or in groups’ important? No it’s not! So let’s cross out both of those in the third sentence because this is just a definition. Now that we are done with that, our next rule is to get rid of repeated information. Since there is no repeated information in this paragraph we can move on to the third rule, which is making an "umbrella" for some of our words. We are going to make an umbrella with the words "and they're smart". We are going to "umbrella" this sentence within the second sentence to where it says, "Dolphins are smart mammals". Now lets take our highlighter and mark "and they're smart" and "dolphins are mammals.” Also let’s highlight "swim to the surface to breathe air" in the second sentence and "they team up in pods to accomplish tasks" in the third sentence while we have our highlighters out. We are going to umbrella those sentences to eventually make them into one. The last two rules are to select a topic and then make a topic sentence. I want someone to raise his or her hand and tell me what our topic is! Let them answer. Great job! Our topic is going to be dolphins. So for our topic sentence, we will make it simple and write, "Dolphins are smart mammals that swim to the surface to breathe air and they team up in pods to accomplish tasks.

5. Say: "Now that we have a better idea how to summarize, I am going to give each of you a copy of another article called " Polar Bears Listed As Threatened.” I want you all to read the passage and try to summarize it the best you can! I will be walking around the room so if you have any trouble just raise your hand so I can know who needs help! Did anyone know that those sweet looking polar bears are in the top ten deadliest to man listed? The article that we are all about to read is going to talk more about why Polar Bears have made the "threatened" list. Can anyone tell me what the word ‘threatened’ means? Correct! It means dangerous! So I want everyone to start reading this article I have passed out so we can learn more about these fascinating creatures and what is being done to help save them. Please read the article silently to by yourself and then use your red marker or highlighter to do the same thing we just practiced together. Once everyone has finished reading and made their marks, we will go over what we all believe is information we would need to use to summarize. Lastly, I want you to get a piece of paper and a pencil and write a sentence of the summarized information we just read.

6. Say: “Now that we have practiced with two different articles and are all experts, I want you to try and apply your new skills by yourself. While you read, practice what we have been doing and mark and highlight the important information. While looking for the important information you can also delete the unimportant or repeated information. Once you have finished your reading, review what you have highlighted and compose a sentence with all of those important details. To help decide what is important, ask yourselves, ‘What is this about’ and ‘What is the point or this article?’ This should be able to help you determine what to include in your summary.”

Assessment: For the assessment, I will use the summarization checklist for each student. Students will be evaluated on their ability to correctly use the summarization rules and strategies to get rid of unimportant or repeated information and make a short summary of what they have read. For the assessment, I will choose a suitable book for my students to read and be able to summarize. I will also ask the students questions pertaining to the book to help them prompt their written summaries.

Summarization Checklist

References:

White, Don. The Secret Language of Dolphins.

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/dolphin-language/

Roach, John. Polar Bears Listed As Threatened.

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/polar-bears-threatened/

Unknown, Praying Mantis

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/praying-mantis/

Lesson Design: https://sites.google.com/site/lydiasreadinglessons/home/summing-it-up

Image: http://www.netanimations.net/dolphin-leaping-out-of-water-doing-an-aerial-loop.gif

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