Ms. Johnson's e-portfolio

 

Rationale: Once children have learned to read accurately and fluently, they can move on to the next step in reading, learning! We can test the mastery of a student’s comprehension skills by having them summarize something they have read. This lesson focuses on teaching summarization, a strategy to help students begin to read to learn. This lesson will help students learn to summarize by teaching them to delete trivial and redundant information and focus on the important parts of a text.

 

Materials:

• Pencil, highlighters, and paper

• Bookmarks with summarization rules on it (for each student)

1. Delete and mark out unimportant or repeated information

2. Find and highlight important information

3. Form a topic sentence from the important information

• Whiteboard and dry erase markers.

• Copies of the article, "Humpback Whale Song and Facts" (one per student, one for teacher) Published by National Geographic Kids.

• Copies of the article, "Blue Whale" (one per student, one for teacher) Published by Discovery Education.

Procedures:

1. Introduction: Say: "Today we are going to be talking about summarizing. Does anyone know what summarizing means? Have you ever read a really good book and told your friend about it? You probably summarized the book for your friend. Summarizing means to find the main ideas in the text. When we can summarize a story well, we know we have comprehended it well. Does anyone remember what comprehend means? Comprehend just means to understand something. Summarizing is one of the steps that helps us comprehend, or understand, the text."

 

2. Summarization Checklist: Now let’s review the summarization rules printed on your bookmarks:

 

               a. Delete and Mark out unimportant or repeated information

 

               b. Find and highlight important information

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               c. Form a topic sentence from the important information

 

Say: “Today, we will practice by reading an article and summarizing it. (Write the summarization rules on the whiteboard). Make sure you refer to our summarization rules as you are doing this, and make sure you put the summary in your own words. The best way to do this is to read slowly, reread important parts, and to make notes. Before we get started, we will review our vocabulary words." 

 

3. Vocabulary: Vocabulary list: omnivore, fluke, tremendous, breaching, and decipher.  To review the vocabulary, the teacher will do the following for each word: 

• Provide a student-friendly definition

• Model how to use it in a sentence

• Provide sample questions for using the word

• Scaffold the students in making a sentence with the word. 

 

Example: Say: “Our first word is ‘omnivore.’  An ‘Omnivore’ is a kind of animal that eats both plants and other animals (meat). Think about the sample question: ‘Is a shark an omnivore?’ Now I will use ‘omnivore’ in a sentence. ‘Humans are omnivores because we live off of meat and vegetables.’ Now, you try to make up a sentence using the word ‘omnivore.’ (The teacher will do this for each vocabulary word).

 

4. Guided Practice: Next, model how students summarize by reading “Blue Whale.” Give every student a copy and then give the following book talk: “The blue whale is the biggest animal in the sea and out of the sea. They eat food by taking in a lot of water and separating out the food. These whales even have similarities to humans. For example, they have belly buttons just like we do! Let’s learn more about this awesome creature.” (Have students read the article silently, then come back together for discussion.) Now, what is our first step to summarizing? Yes! We need to pick out any information in the article that is not important. I don't think we really need to know that “A blue whale's milk supposedly tastes like a mixture of fish, liver, milk of magnesia, and castor oil.” Let's all take our pencil and cross that sentence out. What is our second step? Good! We need to highlight and locate important pieces of information in the text. For example, when it says, “It is warm-blooded, has lungs rather than gills,’ we need to highlight the vocabulary word warm-blooded. How about our third step? That’s right! We need to create our topic sentence. We know that the article is about a blue whale and how it eats and breathes.  “A blue whale eats and breathes in surprising ways.” Now we can use our topic sentence and the information that we have left to write our summary. On your own paper, write the topic sentence and the rest of the information that we have left in your own words. (Walk around to scaffold the writing.) Another idea would be to use the main point to create the topic sentence. Ask the students, "What is it about?" and "What is the main point?"

 

5. On Your Own: Pass out the article “Humpback Whale Song and Facts”. Say, “Now you will practice your summarizing skills on your own with the article I passed out. This article talks about a different kind of whale called a Humpback Whale! You’ll have to read to learn more about this type of whale and why it has such an interesting name.  Remember your vocabulary words for this article are: omnivore, fluke, tremendous, breaching, and decipher. While you are reading the article remember to highlight the important information, and cross out the unimportant information. After each paragraph, write a summary sentence asking yourself the questions: What’s the big idea? What’s the point?”

 

Assessment Checklist:

• Did the student complete the sentences from each article?

• Did the students come up with topic sentences for the remaining paragraphs?

• Did the student successfully delete unimportant/redundant information?

• Did the student successfully identify important parts?

Did the student use the important information to come up with topic sentences?

 

Comprehension questions:

• What are humpback whales known for? 

• How do mother humpback whales show affection to their calves? 

• What part of the humpback whale helps it to be a fast swimmer?

 

Resources:

http://www.ngkids.co.uk/animals/Humpback-Song

 

https://school.discoveryeducation.com/schooladventures/planetocean/bluewhale.html

 

Murrary, Bruce “Using About Point to Awaken the Main Idea” http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/AboutPointRL.html

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For more examples visit Entries: 

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/Entries.html

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