Reading to Learn Lesson Design
Michaela Clemons
Swing into Summarization
Rationale:
After readers learn to read fluently and correctly, they arrive at comprehension, the final in becoming a successful reader. When students can comprehend what they are reading they can understand the message of the text. To do this, it is essential that students are able to tell the difference between important information in the text from the information that is less significant. The point of this lesson is to teach students to summarize, which is a skill that students need so that they can comprehend the text that they have read. This lesson will teach students how to summarize the text as well as how to demonstrate their understanding of what they are reading.
Materials:
1. Construction paper and crayons
2. Vocabulary words [prehensile, robust, prohibited]
3. “Spider Monkey” National Geographic Kids Article
4. Highlighter
5. Summarization Creation Worksheet
6. Pencil
7. Comprehension questions [1. What do spider monkeys have that allow them to swing through trees? 2. What do spider monkeys like to eat? 3. How did they get their name?] written on white board.
8. Assessment checklist
Procedure:
1. Say: “Today we are going to learn about something called summarization. Have any of you ever heard of summarization? [allow time for students to answer]. “That’s correct! Summarizing something means you are telling only the maid ideas of a story, not the entire story. This skill is something that can be very helpful when we are wanting to comprehend, or understand what we are reading. So, today we are going to be Swinging into Summarization by reading an article about some swinging spider monkeys.
2. Say: “Before I hand out the articles let’s talk about spider monkeys. Does anyone already know anything about spider monkeys? [allow time for students to answer] “That’s right! They can swing from tree to tree very quickly and they do sometimes look like spiders when they swing from trees! Okay let’s learn some vocabulary words to make sure we know what all the words in our article mean. The first vocabulary word is prehensile. Has anyone ever heard of this word? [allow time for students to answer]. Prehensile means capable of grasping or holding. Once we read the article, we will understand that word some more. The next word is robust which means healthy and strong. If I were going to use that word in a sentence I would say: The young girl has a robust mind. The last vocabulary word from this article is prohibited. Prohibited means that something has been stopped, forbidden, or banned. Something that is
prohibited cannot be done anymore. I have written these vocabulary words on the board in case you forget what they mean.
3. [Hand out construction paper and crayons] Say: “The last thing we need to do before we summarize our spider monkey article is to learn some rules that we need to follow in order to become great at summarizing. These rules are short and easy to follow and remember, but we need to write them down to make sure we remember them. At the top of your construction paper write Rules then under that write #1 Delete. What do you think the first rule, delete, means? [allow time to answer] “Correct, like we said before, when summarizing we don’t want to tell the whole story, so we are going to get rid of or delete some of the information we do not think is important. Now let’s write #2 shorten. What do we think shorten means when it comes to summarizing? [allow time to answer] “By shorten, we mean we are going to shorten the long parts in the article. So, once we have deleted the parts that aren’t important and found the parts that are important, we are going to shorten those long parts so that the passage can be quickly and easily understood. This can be a little confusing, so let’s practice. If I gave you the sentence “We talked about Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday during class today.” We could shorten this sentence by saying, “We talked about all of the days of the week in class today.” This way, we shortened our summary and kept the important ideas. The last rule we are going to write is #3 create. Once we have deleted the unimportant information and shortened the long parts, we will need to create a main idea sentence for the paragraph.
4. [Pass out summarization creation worksheet] Say: “We are going to practice summarizing together first, then I am going to let you try it out on your own. I just passes out a summarization creation worksheet that I want each of you to use whole summarizing this article. In each column there you are going to write the main idea sentences that you create while summarizing.
5. [Hand out spider monkey article] Say: “I have just given each of you a spider monkey article and I am going to read it aloud while you follow along with your copy. Now that we have read the article, what do you think we should do next? [allow time to answer] “Correct, we need to do our #1 rule, delete! The first sentence seems to be important, right? It says, “Spider monkeys have long, thin arms with hook like hands that allow them to swing through the trees.” This is something that is important, so we should no delete that sentence. Instead, let’s all get out our highlighters and highlight it so we remember that it is important! Now con someone please find a sentence that seems to be not as important? A sentence that we might be able to delete from our summary? [allow time to answer] “Yes! The sentence in the 5th paragraph that says ‘spider monkeys hug each other and wrap their tails around each other’ does not seem as important as the other information, so we can delete it. This sentence is just a cute and fun fact about spider monkeys, but it is not an important piece of information. Let’s all take our pencils and mark through that sentence so we remember that it is not important.
6. Say: “Okay now that you have an idea of what summarizing an article looks like, I want you to finish summarizing the article on your own. I will walk around to make sure you are doing it correctly, and I will give you help when you need it. When you have finished your summarization creating worksheet turn it in to me and begin working on the comprehension questions that are written on the board.
7. Once students have turned in their worksheets, I will assess their work using the assessment checklist below.
Summarization Creation Worksheet:
References:
-“Spider Monkeys” (National Geographic Article)
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/spider-monkey/#spider-monkey-group-25880544.jpg
-Rules for Summarization by Carol Hryniuk-Adamov
- Andie Attita: “Swinging Into Summarization”
https://aka0029.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/reading-to-learn
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http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/advancements/
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