Ms. Ray's Reading Lessons - Reading to Learn

Sliding into Summarization

Rationale: Students need to be able to comprehend texts when learning to read. This includes the ability to summarize. Students can use the about-point method to help them summarize larger texts. The about-point method has students ask themselves two questions after reading the text:

1) What is the text about?

2) What is the main point the author is trying to make?

The first question indicates the subject of the topic sentence. The second question comes from analyzing the text at a deeper level by connecting important points from the passage. Summarization is a strategy that can be used to allow students to take the important information from a passage and remember it while not focusing on trivial information. Readers must find an umbrella term that identifies the main points of the passage. Students will learn how to summarize a specific text in this lesson by using the about-point method.

Materials:

Pencils
Paper
Copies of Emperor Penguins article/text
Summarization checklist for the teacher
Comprehension quiz

Procedures:

1. Say: “Summarizing is when we take important points an author makes in a text, like a book or an article, and leave behind the information that is not as important. It can be challenging to remember everything that happens in a story or all the facts given in an article but using summarization will help us remember everything that was important. Today, we are going to learn more about summarization by reading a text and then narrowing down the important points. We will write a few sentences to help us remember the key points that the author has made about the topic.”

2. Say: “We are going to summarize our text by using the about-point method. This method has us ask ourselves two questions after reading the article: what is the text about and what is the main point that the writer is trying to make? To answer the second question, we need to think of an umbrella term or a category to combine all the important points made in the text.”

3. Say: “We are going to practice the about-point strategy with an article about emperor penguins! Does anyone want to share something cool that they know about penguins? [Have students answer and explain.] I know that emperor penguins lay eggs, are good swimmers and live in Antarctica. They also eat lots of fish. In the text we read, we are going to learn more about emperor penguins and how they live!” [Pass out article to each student]

4. Say: “Before we read, we are going to talk about an unfamiliar word that some of us may not know. The unfamiliar word is flightless. Flightless means unable to fly. For example, the word flight means the action of flying through the air. Listen to the word flightless in a sentence: Ostriches are flightless birds that must run to escape predators. Do you think penguins are flightless birds? [Call on one student to answer and explain]

5. Say: “Let’s read this paragraph from an article about emperor penguins!”

“Emperor penguins spend their entire lives on Antarctic ice and in its waters. They survive—breeding, raising young, and eating—by relying on a number of clever adaptations. These flightless birds breed in the winter. After a courtship of several weeks, a female emperor penguin lays one single egg then leaves! Each penguin egg's father balances it on his feet and covers it with his brood pouch, a very warm layer of feathered skin designed to keep the egg cozy. There the males stand, for about 65 days, through icy temperatures, cruel winds, and blinding storms.”

Say: “We can see that this paragraph is about emperor penguins and how they survive. What are some of the points that the author made? This paragraph discusses that the Antarctic is extremely cold, and the penguins’ eggs must be kept warm by the males while the females are gone. After reading and recognizing the main ideas, I can combine these ideas to make a topic sentence: Male emperor penguins in the Antarctic must keep their eggs warm while the females are gone.”

6. Say: “Now it’s your turn to try the about-point method using this paragraph from the article!”

“Finally, after about two months, the females return from the sea, bringing food they regurgitate, or bring up, to feed the now hatched chicks. The males eagerly leave for their own fishing session at sea, and the mothers take over care of the chicks for a while. As the young penguins grow, adults leave them in groups of chicks called crèches while they leave to fish.”

“What is this paragraph telling us? The females return with food two months later for their newly hatched chicks. Then the male penguins finally get their turn to go fishing. What points is the author making? Yes, the female penguins bring back food for the chicks so that the male penguin can leave to go fish. They take turns until the chicks are old enough to be left behind in groups. How can we combine both of these points? [Have students respond.] That’s right, the male and female penguins take turns caring for their chicks until they are old enough to be left alone.”

7. Say: “Now I want you to finish reading the article and use the about-point method to make your own topic sentences for each section. When you finish, you should have the whole article summarized on your own! This will help you remember the important facts about emperor penguins. Remember to just pick out the meaningful information The point of summarizing is to shorten all the main points into simple sentences. After everyone has finished, we will take a short quiz to see what you remember about emperor penguins.”

Assessment: Collect each student’s summary of the article and evaluate their summarization abilities with the Summarization Assessment Checklist.

Summarization Assessment Checklist:

__ Used important information specifically from the article

__ No trivial examples from the article

__ Significantly reduced text from the original article

__ Contains an idea from each section of the article

__ Organized summary into a 3-5 sentence summary

__ Answered both questions provided by the about-point method

Comprehension Quiz:

1. Where do emperor penguins live?

2. What does the female penguin do after laying an egg?

3. What does the male penguin do to take care of the egg?

4. What happens about two months after the egg is layed?