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Ready, Set, Summarize

Reading to Learn Lesson

Delaney Stephens

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Rationale: The most important goal of reading is to understand what we are reading and get information. Summarization is one of the most powerful strategies for understanding texts. Summarizing is a skill beginning readers need to rehearse in order to be successful in reading comprehension. Once readers can identify the main points of an article, become a more accurate researcher, writer, and reader. During this lesson, students will get the opportunity to analyze a number of articles in attempt to find the main points of the text. Through these practices, the students will gain experience in summarization, using about-point method and eventually, acquire the necessary skills to summarize an article simply by reading it once.

 

Materials:

  1. Individual copies of article “Where do butterflies get their colors?” written for kids

  2. Copy of available on overhead or projector for teacher, “Why do squirrels have bushy tails?”

  3. Pencil and paper for each student.

  4. Summarization checklist for each student

  5. Comprehension quiz

  6. Class set of highlighters

  7. White board and white board marker  

  8. Teacher rubric to grade assessment (found below)

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Procedure: 

1. Introduction to summarization. Say: Today we are going to learn about summarizing texts. Summarization is an important tool to have when we read so we can find the most important information in an article or book. What are some things that we have to do to find the important information? Yes, we need to look for topics and words that come up in the article many times. That way we know it’s important. We also have to get rid of the information that does not help us answer the main overall question, “What is the most important idea from this article? What is the author trying to say?

 

2.  Say: I am passing out a Summarization Checklist which has all the steps listed that help me summarize while we read.  In order to become a good summarizer, we must first know what our summary is going to be about. The first step is to find the main idea when reading a passage. Once we figure out the topic of the article, we can put a check that off our summarization checklists.  Our next step is to read through the article and find the supporting, or helpful, details. Once we find them we will highlight them with our highlighter.  We will also read some unimportant details that are not necessary for us to include in out summary. It is easiest to mark through these unimportant details. Sometimes articles will state the same idea multiple times so we only need to include an idea once in our summarization. After you have found your supporting details and eliminate unimportant or repeated details, you can begin to write your summary, the brief overview of what you just read. Your summary should be short and it should not be copied word for word from the article, you have to put it into your own words and sentences.  

 

4.  Say: As you can see, from your summarization checklist, there are really only a couple of main steps that we need to remember to summarize

            1. Find what the topic is about

            2. Remove un-important and repeated information

            3. Summarize the article into a sentence that has the main idea

            (making sure that we don’t copy word for word and that it’s not too long)

 

5. Say: Let’s practice these steps on a paragraph from an article called “Why do squirrels have bushy tails?” Here is a passage of the article on the projector(overhead/SmartBoard). Let’s read together and use our highlighter to find the most important parts and cross out the un-important and repeated information.

 

“When we see squirrels, we often notice their big, bushy tails first. And that’s no surprise–this body part can be nearly as big as the critter it’s attached to. But the tail is certainly not just there for decoration. Like a tightrope walker holding onto a long pole for balance, the squirrel uses its tail to keep itself steady as it leaps across treetops or does a high-wire act on telephone lines. A squirrel’s tale is also told through its tail. That’s because this animal acrobat uses this appendage to communicate with other squirrels. You’ll often see its unique body language at work in the woods or right in your backyard. When a squirrel is alarmed, it flicks its tail; when it’s feeling aggressive, it fluffs it up. During its breeding season, a squirrel will wave and shiver its tail while approaching the opposite sex.”

 

6. There’s a few words in this article that I may not know such as “appendage.” We can try to use context to figure out what the word means, “A squirrel’s tale is also told through it’s tail. That’s because this animal acrobat uses this appendage to communicate with other squirrels” It sounds like appendage means a part of the body. We are pretty right with that guess; it means a part of a living organism that has a specific function. So for the squirrels the tail is an appendage that is used to communicate. What other animals have appendages?

Other words to be taught: alarmed, shiver

 My summarization sentence for this article would be, “A squirrel’s tail is big and bushy because it can communicate to other animals what it is feeling by the way it moves it’s tail.”

 

7.  Hand out copies of “Where do butterflies get their colors? Say: “I am handing out an article to each of you so you can try summarization on your own. What do you think this article will be about just by looking at the title? One word that is important for you to understand before you begin summarizing is iridescence. This word is an adjective that describes something that contains many colors of the rainbow. A butterflies wings can be iridescent and have many different colors on it. Can you think of another animal that is iridescent? Is a brown bear iridescent? Is a parrot?

 

8. Read the article and write your summarization of the article in 2-3 sentences. Remember to highlight and cross out un-important information. Let’s find out where butterflies get the color in their wings! There will be a quiz after you turn in your article and summaries.

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Assessment:

To assess the students on the process of summarizing, I will ask them to turn in their copy of the passage and examine it to see if they have picked out and crossed out the correct details. I will read over their summaries and grade students on the attached rubric.

 

 

 

 

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Comprehension Quiz

1. Name one thing the color on a butterfly’s wings can do?

2. What are the two sources butterflies get their colors from?

3. What is special about a butterfly’s wings?

 

Click Here to Head back to Reading Genie 

 

References:

Lesson Design Adaptation: Brennan, Belle. Super Summarization with sea turtles. 2015. http://isabellebrennan.wixsite.com/keylessonsinreading/reading-to-learn

 

Articles:

http://discoverykids.com/articles/where-do-butterflies-get-their-colors/

http://discoverykids.com/articles/why-do-squirrels-have-bushy-tails/

Summarization Activity Checklist:

_____ I have figured out the topic of the article.

_____ I have found supporting details to help answer the question.

_____ I have removed unimportant information by crossing it out.

_____ I have removed repeated ideas.

_____ I have written a 3-5-sentence summary.

When summarizing, did the student:

Construct a simple, topic sentence answering the question?

Delete unimportant information?

Include supporting details?

Delete repeated information?

Organize summary with big idea?

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