Reading to Learn
Reading to Learn Design: Out of this World Summarization!
Rationale: Reading is the most vital tool a child can have throughout their education. For students to become expert readers, they must be able to comprehend texts so they can learn new things. A powerful and effective strategy for reading comprehension is summarization. To summarize is to locate and extract important details and main ideas from the text and combine them into a memorable explanation that covers everything the writer is saying. This lesson helps students learn how to find those main ideas and details in the text. This lesson does so by having the instructor model summarization and then giving time for independent practice. The instructor will show how to use summarization by modeling how to pick out important details and eliminate the unimportant ones. Afterwards, the instructor will guide students in summarizing their own texts. The students will be assessed on their summarization skills through comprehension questions.
Materials: Pencil, paper, highlighter, black marker, sample passage on the board, classroom copies of full article “National Geographic for Kids: Asteroids,” summarization rubric.
Procedure:
1. Say: “Today we are going to learn how to summarize when we read. What do we think summarizing means? [take answers from class] Right! Summarizing means taking the most important details of a story and putting them in your own words. Important details would be things such as main ideas, important characters, important facts, or a character’s actions, depending on what you are reading. Summarizing is retelling a story in a short way that is in your own words and gives only the most important details or ideas from the text. We can leave out some parts of the text that don’t contribute very much to the main idea. It is very useful to summarize when we are reading a long book or article that explains or teaches about something.
2. Say: We are going to read a passage together and I’ll show you how to summarize what the author is talking about. Because we have just started our Space unit in science, this passage is about planets! Can anyone tell me the names of some planets in our Solar System? Can someone remind me how many planets there are in our Solar System? Very good. Let’s read to learn what makes a planet a planet. Follow along with me as I read out loud.” [Show 2nd paragraph from Nat. Geo. Article- excerpt below]
3. Say: Wow! That was a lot of information! Can anyone tell me what the main idea was from this article? [Call on students to hear different ideas while writing them on the board.] Let’s take a look at the article again. I am going to highlight the most important details that I read, and I am going to cross out the information that is not important with our black marker. This will help me keep my main idea and details in mind.
4. Explain: “To review, the first sentence usually tells us what the paragraph will be about, but when it doesn’t, we can use the rest of the information in the passage to create our own topic sentence. The first sentence happens to tell us the main idea: we will be learning what classifies something as a planet. The article then makes it clear that this is a question most people never even think about, even though we’re living and breathing on a planet right now. This is an interesting point, but it doesn’t contribute to the main idea. Then the author explains what made scientists start thinking about the qualifications something should have to be a planet- because there were other bodies of rock floating in Space that were bigger than Pluto, scientists asked “If all these large bodies are in Space, how do we determine which ones are planets and which are not?” The important piece to take away from this section is that the discovery of other bodies in Space led to the creation of the three conditions for planet-hood. Finally, the most important part of the passage are these three rules for planets. Great! Now we have successfully picked out the important details of the passage and crossed out the less important parts.”
5. Say: “Now it’s your turn to try summarizing on your own. I am going to pass out a National Geographic article about asteroids. Remember those extra bodies of rock floating around in our Solar System they talked about in that passage we just read? Some of those are asteroids, and this article will tell us more about what an asteroid is. I am going to give you a black marker and a highlighter. As you read, highlight the details you think are important and contribute to the main idea of the text. You should use the black marker to cross out any information you don’t think is as important to the main idea. Remember, the main idea of the story is to tell you facts about asteroids. For example, what they are made of, how big they are, or how many there could be. There might be some parts of the passage that are interesting, but that does not necessarily mean they are important for the main idea.”
6. Say: “Before you read, I want to review what a few of the words in the passage mean because you might not have seen them before.” [Write the word rubble and roving with example sentences.]
7. Say: “When you’ve finished reading and marking the article, I want you to summarize it in 3 to 5 sentences. Remember to begin your summary with a topic sentence, a sentence that tells the reader what the main idea is. Only include important ideas and details in your summary. Don’t include anything you crossed out, only the parts you have highlighted. Write in complete sentences and use correct punctuation. The most important thing to remember is to write in your own words, you should not copy what the author said word-for-word.
8. Say: “Okay, let’s get started reading our articles and summarizing them.” [Allow 20-25 minutes for students to mark article and write a summary.]
Assessment:
Comprehension Questions:
1. How come most asteroids do not come close to hitting the Earth?
2. What do you think asteroids are made up of?
3. Why do you think an asteroid hitting Earth might have caused extinction of dinosaurs?
Rubric:
Name:
Date:
Student clearly read the article fully and used information from different paragraphs: ___/5
Student picked out important details and crossed out unimportant details using the strategy taught in class: ___/5
Student summarized the article in 3 to 5 sentences accurately: ___/5
Student used critical thinking and accurate resources to answer comprehension questions from the article: ___/5
Total Points: ___/20
Comments:
References:
Adcock, Savannah. Summarizing Superheroes! http://savannahadcock.wix.com/wildaboutreading#!reading-learn/c1ttv
Piper, Anna. Super Summarization. https://annamariepiper.wixsite.com/readingdesigns/reading-to-learn
National Geographic Kids magazine. Asteroids. http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/space/asteroids/#asteroid-belt.jpg
National Geographic Kids magazine. What is a Planet? http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/space/what-is-a-planet/#planetary-lineup.jpg
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