Rationale: Our main goal of reading is to be able to understand the message of the text. Once students are able to read fluently, they are able to focus more on comprehension. It is important for readers to understand what they are reading and one of the strategies for comprehension is summarization. Summarization is without a doubt one of the more effective strategies for reading comprehension because it requires readers to reduce a large text into a concise message. In this lesson, students will read an expository text and summarize it, excluding the trivial details. This will allow students to learn reading comprehension based on the research based procedures used in educational experiments. The teacher will then check for understanding by having students answer comprehension questions.
Materials:
Pencils
Paper
Highlighter
“National Geographic Kids: Harp Seal” article for each student
Grading rubric for summaries
Procedures:
1. Say: “Hello Class! Today we are going to learn how to summarize. Now that we are fluent readers, we are going to focus on understanding the text. We’ll do this by using summarization. Summarizing is when we take out the small details of a text to understand the main idea. We are going to practice this by reading an article. We will try to pick out the main points and leave out the unimportant details or examples that add fluff to the article.”
2. Say: We are going to learn some rules for summarization. Everyone take a sheet of paper. We are going to fold the paper into four parts by folding it in half hot dog style and then in half again. We are going to use this to remember the steps for making a summary. In the top fold we are going to put “Pick out the most important information (highlighting or underlining).” The next step is “Delete unimportant or repeated information.” We are also going to use superordination. This means we will find an umbrella term to describe what all happens in the paragraph. The final step is to “Organize the important information into one sentence.” For the last section of the page, we are going to put additional information about summarizing, such as, “summaries should be shorter than the text”.
3. Say: Now I am going to pass out the article we are going to read. Can anyone name an animal that lives in the artic? Well today we will be reading about one because this article is about a harp seal. Does anyone know what a harp seal is? Harp seals are white fluffy mammals that live in the artic but spend most of their time swimming in the chilly seas. Let’s read more about harp seals.
4. Say: Before we read the article, it is important to know how to look at the vocabulary. For example, let’s look at the word blubber. Blubber means the extra fat on a body. Blubber is used when talking about the extra fat of animals, especially those within the artic areas. It is what keeps the seal warm when swimming through the cold waters. Let’s look at how blubber is used in the sentence: “The pups don't have any blubber at birth, but quickly gain weight nursing on high-fat mother's milk.” Would blubber be used to describe the size and weight of a penguin or the size and weight of a cake? Yes, it would be used to describe a penguin.
5. Say: Now we are going to look at the article. Let’s read the first paragraph together. {Guide class in recitation.) Now we are going to summarize the first paragraph. What is this paragraph about? The title usually gives us a hint. (Call on students). Good! It’s about the everyday activities of the seal. We can take out the unimportant information, such as the part about the seals diving 300 feet or sometimes 1000 feet and focus on their diet coming from their diving in the water. Now we have to make a statement sentence to condense this information. For example, we can say, “Seals spend their time diving into water for their food.” This summarizes the first paragraph. Now you are going to read the whole article, which focuses on the other aspects of the seal.
6. Say: Now you are going to summarize the article. Use the study tool we made earlier to remember the steps. For the first step, use your highlighter to highlight important pieces of information. For the second step, mark out anything that you think isn’t important to the main idea. Then, make your summarizing statement about the main idea.
7. Say: On a sheet of paper, write a summary of the article. Use your statement as the topic sentence and support it with important details. Do not include information that is not necessary to your understanding of the article.
8. Say: Once you’ve written the summary, write any vocabulary words that are new to you that you learned in the article. Write a possible meaning for the word. Possible vocabulary words: crustaceans, pelt, mating
9. Assessment: Students will be assessed at the end on how well they did on their summaries. I will use this scoring rubric to grade their summaries for the correct information:
In his/her summary, did the student…
1. Remove trivial information? YES/NO
2. Write a topic statement? YES/NO
3. Write 3-5 sentences with information supporting the main idea? YES/NO
4. Choose the correct main topic for this article? YES/NO
5. List vocabulary words and their own definitions? YES/NO
I will also ask the students a series of comprehension questions to see if they had a good understanding of the article?
1. What happens every year to the seals fur? They shed it and grow a new coat.
2. Why are harp seals called saddleback seals? They have saddle like markings on their backs.
3. How do the mother harp seals find their babies? They know which baby is theirs by smell
4. what are the young harp seals known for? Their snowy white coats
Resources:
National Geographic Kids: Harp Seal
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/harp-seal/#harp-seal-range-map.jpg
Coloring a Summary! Jennifer Ross
https://sites.google.com/view/mrsrosslessonhomebase/reading-to-learn-lessons/coloring-a-summary
Click Here to Go Back to Advancements