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RL DESIGN

SEARCHING FOR SUMMARIZATION

with Miss Taylor

RationaleComprehension is a very important final step in a student’s reading development. When a student reads for comprehension, they are no longer spending time decoding words. Instead, they are focused on understanding the material being presented to them. A great way to test a student’s comprehension is to summarize a book or article that they have read. In this lesson, students will practice summarization as a comprehension strategy. They will summarize text by selecting important information and eliminating unnecessary details. Students will use the following summarization rules: detect and mark out unimportant or repeated information, find and highlight important information, and form a topic sentence from the important information. The teacher will model how students detect important information that is needed to write an effective summary.

Materials

  • Copies of Article for Children

  • Highlighters for each child in the Class

  • Vocab Sheets stapled to back of Article

  • Vocal Powerpoint Show

  • Questions Handout

  •  Assessment Checklist

Procedures:

  1. Say “Have you ever read a really great story and wanted to tell someone about it, but you don’t want to read them the whole thing? What did you do instead?” (wait for responses) “You only told them the major things right? This is called summarization! Summarizing stories is extremely helpful when we don’t want to share a whole text. It can also help you as the reader to better understand what you have just read! Today, we will read an article about Tigers!

  2. Say “But first, everybody pull out a blank sheet of paper and a pencil; we are going to write down the three rules for summarization.” (Demonstrate everything that is supposed to be written by the students on the board) “At the top of your page, I want you to write ‘Three Rules for Summarization.’ When you finish, please look at the board so we can write the rules together.” (Wait for all children to be paying attention). “Number 1: Delete. Who knows what it means to delete something?” (wait for response) “Right! To delete something means to get rid of any information that is not important to our understand of what we read. We want to decide what is important and cross out what is not important. Go ahead and write the definition for ‘delete’ as I write it on the board… Number 2: Substitute. Who knows what it means to substitute something?... That’s right! To substitute something means that once we delete information that is not necessary, we need to shorten the information we kept. Write this definition too! … Finally, Number 3: Create. One we delete the unnecessary information, and substitute for the necessary information, we must create a main idea sentence. While we read our article today, we will create one main idea sentence for each paragraph we read.”

  3. Say “Before we get started reading our article, let’s talk about what we already know about Tigers. Can anyone share something cool they know about tigers?” (wait for responses and record responses on the board). “I have a fun fact for you! Tigers are one of the only cats that like to be in water! Let’s learn some more cool fact about tigers.” (Pass out the articles to the children)

  4. Say “I will help you summarize the first paragraph, but you will do the rest on your own! First, let’s read the paragraph one time through to figure out what it is about. ‘Easily recognized by its coat of reddish-orange with dark stripes, the tiger is the largest wild cat in the world. The big cat's tail is three feet long. On average the big cat weighs 450 pounds, about the same as eight ten-year-old kids. It stands three feet tall with teeth four inches long and claws as long as house keys.’ Now that we have read the paragraph, we will follow our steps of summarization. First, let’s delete any information that is not important by crossing it out… Now, go through and highlight the information that you know is important. ‘The big cat’s tail is three feet long.’ That sounds important right? Let’s highlight that! However in the first sentence, do we need to know that tigers are easily recognized by their coat or do we just need to know that colors their coats are?” (wait for response) “Right! We just need to know what color their coats are! Let’s highlight ‘coats of reddish-orange with dark stripes’ and delete ‘easily recognized by its’. We know we need to highlight ‘largest wild cat in the world’. Do you think we need to highlight ‘On average, the big cat weighs 450 pounds’?” (wait for response) “That’s right! That definitely is important, but do we need to know that 450 pounds is almost the same at 8 10-year-olds?” (wait for response) “No, that really doesn’t tell us anything about tigers… What about the last sentence? Do you think we need to keep it?” (wait for correct response) “That right, (kids name)! We definitely need to keep that sentence.”

  5. Say: “Now, let’s go back to the beginning of the paragraph and see what we can Substitute! We need to add ‘Tigers have’ to the beginning of ‘coats of reddish-orange with dark stripes’ and add ‘and are the’ before ‘largest wild cat in the world’ so that we have a full sentence. But since we have already said that tigers are the largest cats, do you still need to keep ‘the big cat’s’ before we talk about their tail? What could be put here instead?” (Wait for response) “There we go! We should substitute ‘It’s’ … Now we have a good, solid paragraph where we have deleted information and substituted for other information. What’s the final step?” (wait for correct response) “Good job, y’all! Now we need to create a general sentence for what this paragraph is about. Hmm… why don’t we say ‘Tigers are the largest wild cats.’ How does that sound?”

  6. Say “Before we read the rest of the article, we must go over some vocabulary words in the text that we may now know yet. Flip over to the last page of your article, the vocabulary page, and pay attention as I go through this powerpoint show.” (go through powerpoint slide show and talk about each vocab word)

  7. Say “Now, everyone read the article silently to themselves. Remember to cross off unimportant information, highlight important information, and create a main idea sentence for each paragraph. I will walk around to make sure everyone is doing okay. When you finish, turn in your article to me, and I will give you some questions to answer.”

  8. As each student turns in their work, hand them a comprehension question worksheet. Also, use the checklist attached below to assess the work each student turns in.

Comprehension Questions:

1. What colors make up a tigers coat? (reddish-orange and black)

2. How many cubs are in a tigers litter? (3 or 4)

3. When do tigers prefer to hunt? (when it's dark)

4. Because of their size, strength, and predatory skills, tigers are considered one of the "_____ _____." (big cats)

Resources:

How to Summarize:

https://www.winnipegsd.ca/schools/Kelvin/StudentResources/khslibrary/Documents/Rules%20for%20Summarization.pdf

Miss Runyan's Reading:

https://hayrunyan.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn

Stripes and Summarization, Jennifer Adwell:

https://jla00365.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn

 

Article:

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/tiger/#ww-wild-cats-tiger.jpg

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http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/applications/

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