Reading to Learn

“Summarizing is Cool”

Reading to Learn:

By: Keneisha Garrett

Rationale: Our goal for readers is to comprehend the information they are reading. One strategy that will help with comprehension is summarizing. Summarizing just means identifying and recalling the main ideas in a text. This lesson will give students brief steps in summarization and allow students to put their knowledge of summarization into practice. Students will practice their skills on short passages while using the summarization checklist.

Materials:

-Each child will have a copy of the following article: The National Geographic for Kids: The Giant Panda

-Copies of Honey Bee Mystery

-Summarization checklist on poster board: delete unimportant information, delete repeated information, pick out important information, and create the topic sentence

-Summarizing checklist

1. Say: "Today we are going to be talking about summarizing. Does anyone know what summarizing means? Summarizing just means to find the main ideas in the text. We need to use summarizing when we read so we make sure and comprehend the story. Does anyone know what comprehend means? Comprehend just means to understand something. Summarizing is one of the steps that helps us comprehend the text."

Now review with students the summarization checklist (listed above).

-We need to delete unimportant information because that information doesn't help us understand the text

-We need to delete repeated information because that information will just confuse us, and those facts have already been stated

-We need to pick out important information because that information provides us with details on what the text is about

-We need to create a topic sentence because that helps us know what the text is about and what the main idea is.

2. Say: "Before we practice summarization, we are going to go over vocabulary. Let’s look at the word rare. To be rare means to be unusual or not common; very few. Giant Panda Bears are rare because there are only a few left. Panda bears are rare because they are very unique and different.

Finish this sentence, The Golden Tabby Tiger is rare because…..

Possible answer: very few left, unique, different, etc.

Another important word to look at is broad. Broad means being wide in width.

3. Display the summarization checklist on poster board for the students to see. Go over the checklist again explicitly. Say: "Now I'm going to show you how to summarize an article. I'm going to cross out unimportant information and repeated information and underline important information. I'm also going to find the topic sentence. I will summarize this article in one sentence.

4. High in dense bamboo forests in the misty, rainy mountains of southwestern China lives one of the world’s rarest mammals: the giant panda, also known as the panda. Panda’s eat nothing but bamboo and leaves.

I'm going to cross out information that is repeated information and unimportant information. I'm going to underline important information that is we have to have to understand the text. Then I'm going to create a topic sentence. Ask yourself these questions, what's this passage about? What's the big idea?

I am going to cross out the part about high density and the misty mountains of southwestern. This statement doesn’t help us figure out what the article is about.

Summary: Panda Bears reside in China and are considered one of the world’s rarest mammals.

4. Say: "Now let's try summarizing the next paragraph together. Everyone go to the next paragraph. Remember our summarization checklist. We are going to underline important information and cross out unimportant information and repeated information. Remember to create that topic sentence!"

Pandas eat almost nothing but bamboo shoots and leaves. Occasionally they eat other vegetation, fish, or small animals, but bamboo accounts for 99 percent of their diets. Pandas eat fast, they eat a lot, and they spend about 12 hours a day doing it. The reason: They digest only about a fifth of what they eat. Overall, bamboo is not very nutritious. To stay healthy, they have to eat a lot—up to 15 percent of their body weight in 12 hours—so they eat fast.

Topic: Polar bears have to eat very fast to remain nutritious.

Why? Because their diet consist of mainly bamboo which is not very healthy

Summary: Polar Bears eat very fast and various other foods to replace the nutrition lost while eating bamboo.

5. "Today we will practice our summarizing skills when reading. We are going to be reading about why so many honey bees are dying. You will have to read and find out about this crazy mystery. We are going to read the entire National Geographic article. You will stop and write a summary sentence after each paragraph. Remember to use our summarization checklist and underline important information, cross out unimportant information and repeated information. Most importantly, write that topic sentence!"

6. Assessment:

For assessment I will use the checklist listed below to grade the students summarizing skills.

When summarizing, did the student…

Yes

Delete unimportant information?

Delete repeated information?

Select a topic?

Write an inclusive, accurate and, simple topic sentence to summarize the passage?

References: