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Wild About Summarizing
Madeline Langley
Rationale: When readers become fluent, they can focus more on comprehending the text rather than decoding every word. It is important for students to be taught learning strategies that will aide in their learning. Summarization is one strategy that help with comprehension. Summarizing allows a reader to find the important information in a story and delete the unimportant information. This lesson will allow students to practice summarizing by recognizing main ideas in a text and writing sentences to summarize various articles. This lesson will aid in reading comprehension by allowing students to use what they have read to answer various questions.
Materials: Pencils, paper, highlighters, pens – all one for each student, dry-erase board, dry-erase markers, “Mountain Lion” article (on the SmartBoard for the class to look at together), classroom copies of “Hippopotamus”, classroom copies of “African Lion”, summarization rubric/checklist
Procedures:
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Say, “Now that you have learned to read, you are going to read to learn. One way we can comprehend what we are reading is to summarize it. Does anyone know what summarizing means?” [wait for responses] “Summarizing is when we take out all of the important information from a text. When you summarize, you are explaining all of the important details that you have found. It is important to leave out any details that are not important.”
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Say, “Now, let’s look at the rules of summarization. [Write each rule of the whiteboard as you read them aloud] “Rule number one: Get rid of unimportant and repeated information. This means to get rid of any unnecessary information and anything that is stated more than once. Rule number two: Superordinate items and events. This rule is telling us to create a more general term for a list of things or a series of events. Rule number three: Select a topic. This means to pick a sentence that you believe covers all information in a text. Rule number four: Create a topic sentence. A topic sentence states the topic of a paragraph and the main point the author is trying to make.”
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Say, “We have covered how to summarize and now we are going to practice by summarizing together. First, let’s review some vocabulary that we will find in this article. Does anyone know what the word endangered means? Endangered means at this risk of extinction. In the article, there is a sentence that says, “An endangered subspecies of mountain lion also remains in Florida.” This means that there are mountain lions in Florida that are at risk of becoming extinct.”
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Say, “Let’s look at the article I have on the SmartBoard. [Have article “Mountain Lion” pulled up.] A mountain lion can be a very dangerous predator. What do you think you would do if you saw a mountain lion? [Wait for responses.] I want everyone to read it quietly to themselves as I do the same. [Wait for students to finish.] Now that everyone has read the passage, who thinks that they can give me a summary of what they have just read? [Allow students to share their summaries.] Nice work! Did anyone notice that on my copy, I highlighted the details that I believe to be important and marked out the ones that I thought were not so important? This is what I want everyone to do as you read your next passage!”
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[Pass out “Hippopotamus” article.] Say, “This article is about hippos. You will see the word submerged in this article. Submerged means to be completely covered by something. Hippos often submerge themselves in water to cool off. Can anyone give me an example of when something might be submerged? [Wait for responses.] I am going to give each of you a highlighter and a Sharpie. As you read, I want you to highlight the information that you believe is important and cross out the information that you do not think is important. When you are finished reading and marking the passage, I want you to summarize the article into at least five sentences. Be sure to include only key details and not copy the text. Use your own words!” [Allow students about 15 minutes to complete this step.]
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Say, “Now that you have each summarized the passage, who would like to share some of their summaries? Let’s see if we have any common main ideas.” [Allow students to share. Write similar main ideas on the whiteboard.]
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Say, “Now that we have looked at the rules of summarization and have practiced summarizing, I want each of you to read this next article and summarize it. You will be turning this in for me to grade.” [Pass out “African Lion” article.] “First, let’s take a look at word that might confuse you while you are reading. A sentence in the article reads, “…the group effort often degenerates to squabbling…” What do you think degenerate means? This word means to show an evidence of decline. Will someone please use degenerate in a sentence for the class? [Wait for responses.] Make sure you remember this as you read! Be sure to look for the main idea and key details. Bring me your summaries when you are done.”
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[After collecting all summaries, ask these three comprehension questions.] Say, “Who can tell me how the male lion marks his territory?” [Wait for responses.] “Very nice, now who hunts for the food, mostly: the female or the male?” [Respond to students’ answers.] “Last question, when does the cub start to hunt for food?”
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Teacher will assess the summarization that was handed in by using the rubric below.
References:
Jones, Hailey. “Happy Hippos for Summarization.” https://sites.google.com/site/haileyshelpfullessons/happy-hippos-for-summarization
Moore, Laura. “Wild about Summarization.” https://sites.google.com/site/lauramooreresearchbasedreading/reading-to-learn
“African Lion” Article:
National Geographic Kids- Mountain Lion http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mountain-lion/
“Hippopotamus” Article:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/hippopotamus/
