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Swimming into Summarization

Reading to Learn Design

Beth Buckelew

 

Rationale: For students to be able to comprehend different texts successfully, it is necessary for them to be able to use the strategy of summarization. Being able to kind key details and main ideas in a text can help students develop into skilled readers. With the use of this lesson, students will learn how to find the key points and separate the main ideas in a story. This will then help students to summarize the text they have read, after they have observed the teacher modeling how to disregard unimportant information and pick out the important details and information that is seen in throughout the text.

 

Materials:

  • Highlighters and pen/pencils

  • Paper

  • Summarization Rules Poster

  1. Leave out unimportant information

  2. Leave out repeated information

  3. Pick out important information

  4. Find an umbrella term

  5. Create a topic sentence

  • Summarization Checklist Rubric for each student

  • Turtle cut outs for each student

  • “Green Sea Turtle” printed articles for each student

  • “Green Sea Turtle Facts” printed articles for each student

  • Smartboard/whiteboard

  • Comprehension Questions

Green Sea Turtles

  1. How do baby sea turtles make it to the ocean if they are born on the beach?

  2. Why are green sea turtles said to be the species of hard shelled turtles?

  3. What type of diet do they have? What would the typically eat in a day?

Green Sea Turtle Facts

  1. Explain the carapace of the green sea turtle.

  2. What gave them the name ‘green’ sea turtles?

  3. Why do they go to certain beaches to lay their eggs? What are those beaches called?

 

Procedures:

  1. Say: “Good morning class! Today we will be learning how to summarize so we can become expert readers. Summarizing text helps us to better comprehend what we are reading. Does anyone know what summarizing means when you read something? [student responses] That’s right! When readers summarize the text, they read a passage or part of a text and they use that information to retell what the story or passage was about by taking the most important details and main ideas from the text. I f we only take the main ideas, do we need to mention every detail in the passage we read? [student responses] Noooo! When we summarize, we only need to mention the most important details and main ideas. We leave out the unimportant small details because they aren’t needed in the summarization. Summarizing a text helps us comprehend the information. Comprehending something means that we are able understand what we’re reading and the meaning behind the text. If we summarize a text, it makes it easier if we go back and look at the text because we only picked the key points out of the passage.” [Review with students the summarization checklist found on the poster]

    1. Leave out details that are unimportant or trivial because that information does not help us understand the text to summarize.

    2. Leave out details that are repeated because that text has already been used or seen and will lead to confusion.

    3. Pick out important information from the text because those important details and main ideas will help us to summarize the text to comprehend the message of the text.

    4. Create a topic sentence that tells us what the text is about and mentions the main ideas presented in the text to introduce your summary.

  2. Say: “Before we start summarizing, we are going to go over some vocabulary because we have to understand what words mean before we can comprehend the text’s message. Let’s start with the first green sea turtle article and look at the first sentence that contains the word species. The sentence states, ‘Green sea turtles are the world’s largest species of hard-shelled sea turtle.’ After reading, this sentence tells us that species has something to do with all turtles. Does anyone know what the word species mean? [student responses] Yes, that’s right! Species means a group of animals who are all kind of alike but different. There are many different species of turtles, but today we are going to be talking about green sea turtles. So, would a dog be a type of species related to turtles? [student responses] You are right, they are not related! Dogs and turtles are not alike so they are not the same species. A different passage of text contains one of the words that we have reviewed before—plankton. The sentence says, ‘The first few years of a green sea turtle’s life are spent floating at sea, where they feed on plankton.’ Can anyone tell me what plankton are? [student responses] Plankton are tiny living things that float in the ocean. It is made up of plants, animals, and organisms.”

  3. Say: “Now, we are going to read an article on green sea turtles. [article is displayed on the SmartBoard and articles are given to each student] Let’s read the article silently and discuss it together. [set time aside for the students to read the article… pass out turtle cut offs as the students read] When you get finished reading, write down our Rules of Summarization from the poster in the front of the classroom on your cut out to help you remember the steps on how to summarize. You can also use your cut out to mark your place in a book, so you know where you are at. We will go over the rules of summarization again before our discussion so y’all will be refreshed before you start working on your own. [go over summarization rules again] I’m going to show y’all how I would summarize the third paragraph of the article on green sea turtles. By following our summarization steps, we have to make sure to highlight the important information that we find with our highlighter and cross out unimportant or repeated information with our pencil. The first thing that we have to do is to leave out unimportant information from the article. I would leave out the part of second sentence that says how many seconds they come up for air and go under water that is a trivial fact and is not important to summarize. Second, we are supposed to leave out repeated information. We don’t have any repeated information so we will skip that step and move on. Third, we pick out important information to include our summary. My passage should look like this when I highlight important information and cross out unimportant or repeated information: ‘Green sea turtles spend most of their lives underwater, where they can rest for up to five hours at a time before coming up for air. When active, they typically alternate between being underwater for a few minutes and coming up to the surface to breathe air for a few seconds. Green sea turtles are also known to sunbathe on land.’--- I would use my highlighted important information to construct one topic sentence on what I read in the passage. Y’all need to ask yourself, “What is this passage about? What is the main idea?”

  4. Say: “Now I want you to try to summarize the fourth paragraph of the green turtle article. I will be walking around to help, so feel free to ask your classmates for help as well. Make sure you follow the summarization steps listed on the poster and on your bookmark. Also, make sure that you use your highlighter to mark important text and use your pencil to cross out unimportant or repeated texts. From your important text highlighted, construct one topic sentence on what the passage was about. When you finish, share your summarization process and your topic sentence with a partner. When everyone finishes, we will discuss what each of you found with the class. [Students complete work] What did you cross out as unimportant information? [“unlike most sea turtles” is not important] What did you highlight as important [Plant based diet, gives their fat a green color] What was your topic sentence [Sample topic sentence: Greens sea turtles fat is colored green from their green plant based diet.] Your marked paragraph should look similar to this: Adult green sea turtles eat a primarily plant-based diet that consists of seaweed and sea grass. Scientists believe these green foods give the sea turtle’s fat its green color. The shell of the green sea turtle usually has different shades of a brown or is an olive color. --- Go ahead and finish reading the rest of the article and continue to mark out/highlight the text as you go. You will need to construct a short paragraph with a topic sentence for the article and you will need to answer the comprehension questions. I will be walking around the classroom to help if needed. We will discuss our summarization steps, the paragraph with the topic sentence that you all came up with and answer the comprehension questions. [Students complete work given as the teacher walks around to help the students]”

  5. Say: “To finish up our lesson on summarization, our next article that we will read is titled ‘Green Sea turtle facts’ from National Geographic Kids. This article has a lot of interesting facts about green sea turtles that we really didn’t get to read in the last article. Just like the last article that we did, y;all are going to use the steps of summarization to guide your highlighting important information and crossing out unimportant or repetitive information, and then you will construct a paragraph on the entire article using the highlighted information with a topic sentence. Then answer the comprehension questions and complete the finish the sentence exercise on the board: Green sea turtles are endangered because ­­­­­­­­­­____________. Remember to use complete sentences and correct punctuation in all of you writing!”

  6. For the assessment of my students, I will collect the articles that the students marked, paragraph with topic sentence, and comprehension question answers. The summarization checklist rubric will be used to assess the paragraph students wrote on ‘Green Sea Turtle Facts’ on the following certain criteria. The student must show that they can construct a simple topic sentence, delete unimportant information, delete repeated information, include supporting details, and construct a summary that includes the main ideas.

 

Summarization Checklist Rubric:

 

When summarizing, did the student…                            

     Construct a simple topic sentence?                                             yes/no

     Delete unimportant information?                                                yes/no

     Delete repeated information?                                                       yes/no

     Include supporting details?                                                          yes/no

     Construct a summary that includes the main ideas?            yes/no

 

References:

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