Reading to Learn

Sniffing Out Summarization

Reading to Learn Lesson Design

By: Callen Popwell


Rationale:

After readers learn to read fluently and correctly, they arrive at comprehension, the final step 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 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 Markers
  2. Vocabulary Words [festive, tune in, scent] written on the whiteboard
  3. “You Sensed It!” Time for Kids Article
  4. Highlighter
  5. Summarization Creation Worksheet
  6. Pencil and Paper
  7. Comprehension Questions [1. How many senses do people have? 2. How do people taste things? 3. What way can people use their sight sense?] written on the whiteboard
  8. Assessment Checklist

Procedures:

  1. Say: “Today we are going to learn something called summarization. Have any of you ever heard of summarizing? [allow time for students to answer]. “That’s right! Summarizing means you are telling the main parts of a story, not the entire thing. 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 Sniff Out Summarization by reading an article about our senses!
  2. Say: “Before I hand out the articles let’s talk a little about our senese. Does anyone know anything about our senses?” [allow time for students to answer]. “Alright let’s learn some vocabulary really quick to make sure we know what all the words in our article mean. The first vocab word is festive. Has anyone ever heard of this word? [allow time for students to answer]. Festive means cheerful and exciting. The next word is tune in which means to watch or listen to. If I were going to use that word in a sentence I would say: Tune into the news tonight to learn about our country! The last vocab word from this article is scent which means a smell. I have these vocabulary words written on the board in case you forget what they mean.”
  3. [Hand out construction paper, markers, and the Summarization Creation Worksheet] Say: “The last thing we need to do before we summarize our article is learn some rules that we need to follow in order to become great summarizers. These rules are short and easy to remember, but we need to write them down to make sure we don’t forget. At the top of your construction paper write Rules, under that write ‘#1 Delete’. What do you think the first rule, delete means? [allow time to answer] “Correct, like we said earlier, when summarizing we don’t want to tell the whole story, so we are going to 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] “We are going to shorten the long parts. So, once we have deleted the parts that weren’t important and found the parts that were important, we are going to shorten those long, important parts so that the passage can be easily and quickly understood. This can be a little confusing, so let’s practice. If I gave you the sentence: “We talked about January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December during class today.” We could shorten it by saying, “We talked about all of the months during 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 on your own. I have just passed out a summarization creation worksheet that I want each of you to use while summarizing this article. In each column you are going to write the main idea sentences that you create while summarizing.”
  5. [Hand out You Sensed It! article] Say: “I have just given each of you a You Sensed It! article and I am going to read it out loud while you follow along on your copy. [Read the article] Now that we have read the article what do you think we should do next? [Allow time to answer.] “Correct, we need to delete! The first sentence says: “We take in new information all the time. We do it with our five senses.” This does not seem to be super important, so we need to delete it. Let’s take our pencils and mark through it so we remember it is not an important sentence. The next sentence says: “These are the sentences of sight, taste, touch, hearing, and smell”. This seems important, so we should not delete it. Instead, let’s get our highlighters and highlight it so we remember that it is important!”
  6. Say: “Okay now that you have an idea of what summarizing an article looks like, I want you to finish summarizing this article on your own. I am going to walk around to make sure you are on the right track and I will be there to help you if you need it. When you have finished your summarization creating worksheet, turn it in to me and begin working on the comprehension questions that I have written on the board.”
  7. Once students have turned in their worksheets I will assess their work using the assessment checklist below.

Assessment Creation Worksheet

Paragraph Number Main Idea Sentence




Assessment Checklist

Student Name: _____________________ Date: ____________

1. Did the student fill out the summarization chart on his or her paper?

2. Did the student create a topic sentence for the first, second, third, and fourth paragraphs?

3. Did the student successfully delete unimportant information?

4. Did the student successfully identify important information?

5. Did the student use the important information to create topic sentences?

Additional Comments:


References:

Article: You Sensed It! https://www.timeforkids.com/k1/you-sensed-it/

Andie Attita: Swinging Into Summarization, Reading to Learn Lesson Design

https://aka0029.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/reading-to-learn