Reading to Learn | reading-designs

Super Summarizers!

Reading to Learn

Rationale: Reading is often times the initial step for students to learn new information. While reading, it is crucial for them to differentiate between significant and insignificant information. Summarizing is a skill that all beginning readers need to practice in order to become successful in reading comprehension. Students who know how to summarize are able to recall and identify the main ideas of a passage. In this lesson, I will teach students how to summarize. I will teach students how to summarize by having them follow the summarizing checklist and by leading them through an example on the smart-baord. By providing students with this instruction, they will gain experience in summarization and eventually be able to summarize on their own.

Materials:

Highlighters for each student
Copy of “Pufferfish” for each student
Copy of “Coyote” for each student
Pencil for each student
Assessment chart (attached below)
Smart-board or Overhead Projector

Procedure:

Say: Today we are going to learn a reading strategy called summarization. Can anyone tell me what summarization means? [Discuss with students] Great job. To summarize means to find the most important information in a story. You want to ignore the tiny details and focus on the main ideas.
Say: Now that we know what summarization is, lets talk about the rules to summarizing. [Display the rules on overhead projector] The first rule to summarizing is to delete unimportant or repeated information. So when you find information in the text that is not important to the meaning of the text, you can draw a line through it so it is crossed out. The second rule of summarizing is to find important information. When you find information that you think is important highlight or underline it. The third and final rule is to write a topic sentence using the information you found to be important. This sentence should capture all the important information of a paragraph.
[Pass out copies of Pufferfish, and display a copy on the document camera] Say: I am passing out an article titled, “Pufferfish” that we are going to use to practice summarizing as a class. This article is from National Geographic Kids. This article talks about how pufferfish fight off their predators and how in Japan they are a delicious treat. Does anyone know how pufferfish fight off their predators? Does anyone know how they are cooked in Japan? We will find out once we read but first there are a few new vocabulary words we need to go over. The first word is “antidote”. Does anyone know what “antidote” means? An antidote is a medicine taken or given to counteract a particular poison. The antidote was given to a patient after poison had entered her body. Can the boy be given an antidote after getting toxin injected into him to help heal him? Yes! Help me finish the sentence the little girl was given an antidote to help….? Very good! The little girl was given an antidote to help heal her from toxins. [Do this with the following words: brackish, vulnerable, toxic and elastic]
Say: Now that we know those important vocabulary terms, lets practice summarizing an article as a class. As you read an article you want to ask yourself a few questions: what is the article about? What are some main facts? What is the author’s purpose? After you answer these questions you can begin working on summarizing. [Use the first paragraph of Pufferfish to model for the class how to summarize] Lets read the first paragraph together as a class. I am going to show you how to summarize using our checklist. [Display checklist on projector] -Pufferfish can inflate into a ball shape to evade predators. Also known as blowfish, these clumsy swimmers fill their elastic stomachs with huge amounts of water (and sometimes air) and blow themselves up to several times their normal size. Some species also have spines on their skin to ward off predators. Even if a predator gobbles up a puffer before it inflates, it won't enjoy the snack. Most pufferfish contain a toxic substance that makes them foul tasting and potentially deadly to other fish. The toxin is deadly to humans. There is enough poison in one pufferfish to kill 30 adult humans, and there is no known antidote.
Say: I am going to cross out information that is repeated and unimportant [Show on smartboard to class]. I am going to underline importnat information that we need to understand the text. Then I am going to create a topic sentence. Topic sentece: Pufferfish can inflate themselves into balls and use their spines and toxin to keep predators away.
Say: Now, lets try summarizing together. Make sure you are looking for the most important information in the paragraph. [Read the next paragraph which is also the last paragraph in the article and allow students to work on their own while you only help when it is needed. Walk around and make sure everyone is on track and has the hang of it. After everyone or almost everyone is finished go over it as a class.]
Say: Great work everyone! Now that we have practiced summarizing together, I want you to try it on your own with a new article. This article is also from National Geographic Kids and is about Coyotes! Coyotes are unique aniamls that have been around for a long time. Where did they come from though and where are they now? We will have to read to find out. Once I hand out the article you may begin summarizing but make sure you remember the three steps!