Rationale: The purpose of this lesson is to teach readers how to read in order to learn. One of the most important parts to comprehension is summarization. Once a student is at the point of summarizing the text, they are more focused on learning and understanding the text rather than reading it word for word and having to constantly decode unknown words. There are two common questions teachers ask students after they finish reading a text. Those questions include: What was the text about? and What was the main point the writer is making about the topic? The first question is to get the reader to recap the text and the second question gets them to think deeper about the text they have just read.

 

Materials:

• A copy of the Elephant article (link at the bottom of page)

• Pencil

• Paper

• White board

• Markers

• Copy of 5 Summarizing Steps

• Copy of the book The Giving Tree for each group (4)

 

Procedure:

1. Good morning boys and girls! Today during reading we are going to learn about how to understand our reading. “Does anyone know the word that we use when we talk about understanding our reading?” Right! Comprehending means to understand. There are many skills that go with begin about to comprehend. Today we are going to focus on our summarizing skill. “Can someone tell me what it means to summarize something?” Great Job! Summarizing is when we review what we have just read and are able to tell someone what the story was about without having to look back at the text.

2.Begin by explaining summarization. There are 5 steps that we can use to help us summarize. These steps include:

1. Pick out important details that are necessary to the story.

2. Pick out the less important or repeated ideas from the passage and eliminate them.

3. Highlight the important and necessary details using key words.

4. Pick a topic sentence.

5. Invent a topic sentence is there is none.

These steps help you find the most important information in the story. I am going to pass out a reminder card with our 5 steps on it so you can use it anytime you get stuck or need a reminder on how to properly summarize.

3.   Now that we are familiar with comprehension and summarizing, we are going to read a short article about elephants. I would like you to read the short article to SILENTLY to yourself. As you read, think about the important points so that you can properly summarize. Once you have finished reading and have figured out the important parts of the article using your reminder card, I would like for you to put your head down so I can see that everyone has finished.

4.   Now, as a class, we are going to summarize our article using our 5 steps as a class.  While doing this with the class, make sure to correctly model the 5 steps. After we read the first passage we should be able to figure out our main idea of the article. Have the students tell you the parts that they believe go with each point as we walk through the article. By having them talk more they are learning from each other about the different important facts and ideas. Make sure to have the class’s example on the board so they can refer back to it as they continue working on the rest of the article.

5. Now that we all have a pretty good idea on how to accurately summarize a text, I am going to split you into groups and give you a copy of the book The Giving Tree for you to read and try to summarize as a group. If you need help look back at your reminder card or refer back to the example we did on the board. Once the students have finished, allow them to collaborate with other groups to discuss the points that they think are important and they can compare with the points that the other group thought were important. This helps the students be able to explain their thought process on why they believe these are the most important points. During this time, I will walk around and observe their progress and help when needed.

6. For the assessment, I will have each student write their own summary of the story. I will have them use the 5 steps to summarize the story. They will be required to write it in paragraph form and not just in bullets. I will use the 5 steps as a guide to grade each summary. If I see that there are students that are still struggling I will create a time to review the material with them as a smaller group.

 

Resources:

 

Elephant Article: https://www.ducksters.com/animals/elephant.php

 

http://jordanpayne95.wixsite.com/jordanslessondesigns/reading-to-learn

 

Silverstein, Shel. The Giving Tree. New York: Harper and Row, 1964.

 

Hannah Locklear Sea-ing Summarization