Reading to Learn
Lets Summarize with Felines!
Hannah Shaw
Rationale: Being able to read fluently means that you are able to fully and correctly comprehend the text that you have read. Summarization is one of the most important skills to help show full comprehension of the text. The “about-point” method is one way that we can ask ourselves two questions to summarize the text. Questions one is “what is the text about”. This questions is very surface level and requires basic knowledge of the text. The second question is “what is the main point that the author is trying to make about the topic?”. This questions require the student to recognize the smaller details of the text. These two questions help the students come up with a topic sentence summarizing the text where the answer to question one is the subject and the answer to question two is the predicate.
Materials
paper (one per student- for summary paragraph)
Pencils (on per student)
Summarization checklist (one per student for the teacher)
Comprehension checklist (one per student)
Copies of the Animals for Kids- Cats text (one per student)
Procedures:
Say “When we read a text, it is important that we summarize! Summarizing is when we remember the important points than an author makes after we read a text. Sometimes this is hard, so we can use summarization strategies to make this easier! We are going to read a text and then practice a summarization strategy to help us remember what the text was about”
Say “An example of a summarization strategy is called the about-point strategy. When we us this strategy, we ask ourselves two questions. The first question is- ‘what is the text about?’. Once we answer that question, we will answer the question ‘what is the main point that the author is trying to make?’. The second question should be a broad ‘umbrella topic’ that combines al fo the important points that the author makes within the text. Once we have answered these two questions, we can combine these two answers to come up with a topic sentence of the text.
Say "Before we read this text, I am going to introduce a vocabulary word from the text so you can understand the article better. Raise your hand if you know what a mammal is. Great! a mammal is a warm blooded animal with hair or fur. They also feed their babies with milk! Can you raise your hand and give me some examples of mammals? Great! Dogs, lions, cows, humans. Great job! We are going to read an article about a kind of mammal."
Say “We are going to practice this strategy on an article about cats. Raise your hand if you have ever seen or had a pet cat! What are some things that you know about cats? This text will teach us about different kinds of cats and what they do” *pass out articles*
Say “let read the first part of the article together! ‘the scientific family of cats is called felidae. There are two subfamilies of the felidae. The panterinea are the big cats like the lion, tiger, and leopard. The Feline are the medium to small cats like the cheetah, the lynx, and the domestic cat. All cats are mammals!’ So after reading, we know that this paragraph is about cats! What are some of the important points that the author is trying to make? There are different kinds of cats. Cats come in different sizes. All cats are mammals. When we combine all of these ideas, I can make a topic sentence ‘Cats come in many different sizes and and colors, but all of them are mammals.
“Now I want you to use this ‘about point strategy on the text paragraph titled ‘the domesticated cat’ ‘the domesticated cat is one of the most popular pets in the world. It is though that cats have been kept as pets for thousands of years. Most people consider themselves cat or dog people depending on the pet they prefer, but many people like both cats and dogs’ What is this text about? Yes! Domesticated cats. Do you know what domesticated means? Yes! It means that they are tame and kept as pets. What are the main points that the author is trying to make about domesticated cats? yes, that they have been pets for a long time. What else? yes, that most people like both dogs and cats! How can we combine these pain points to make a topic sentence? Yes, I think that is great! Cats have been domesticated for thousands of years and is one of the most popular pets today.”
Say “Now I want you to finish reading the article using this about-point strategy to make your own topic sentence. One for each paragraph. Once you finish doing this for each paragraph, you can combine your topic sentences into a paragraph and you will have a good understanding and summary of the article. Make sure you are writing in your own words and we will have a quiz afterwards.”
Assessment: collect the student’s summary paragraphs and evaluate them based on the rubric/checklist
___ summary is organized into a paragraph
___ information was collected from each of the paragraphs
___ student used their own words
___ trivial details were excluded from the summary
___ the information included in the summary was meaningful and important
Quiz
What is the one thing in common between all cats?
What were cats first used for?
What is a group of cats called?
Why do you have to be careful around cats?
How long is it believed that cats have been kept as pets?
References:
Article: Animals for Kids, Cats, https://www.ducksters.com/animals/cats.php
Caroline Dean, Surprise! Lets Summarize! https://deancaroline4.wixsite.com/teachingfluency/reading-to-learn