Reading to Learn | teachingreadiness

Whoo! Whoo! Who Said Summarize?

Reading to Learn

Jenna Wilson

Rationale: Once children have gained reading fluency, we must teach them how to appropriately comprehend a text. The goal of reading comprehension is reading to learn. An effective tool to help children summarize is by applying three summarization rules. These rules will help delete trivial and redundant information of a text. Student’s will use the following summarization rules: delete and mark out unimportant or repeated information, find and highlight important information, and form a topic sentence from the important information.

Materials:

Pencil for each student
SmartBoard
Highlighter for each student
Summarization Template for each student (Attached)
Summarization Owl for each student (Attached)

Rules:

1) Delete and mark out unimportant or repeated information.

2) Find and highlight important information.

3) Form a topic sentence from the important information.

Summarization Checklist for each Student (Attached)
Comprehension Questions for each student (Attached)
Class set and teacher copy of article, “Snowy Owl”

URL: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/snowy-owl/#snowy-owl-tree-perched.jpg

Procedures:

1. Say: Today we are going to practice summarization. Does anyone know what summarization is? Does anyone know how they describe a good book to a friend? We normally would not recite the book word for word. Rather, we would give them a summary of the book. We summarize to understand the meaning and remember the important points of a text. Let’s become master summarizers!

2. Say: Let’s talk about the rules of summarization before we begin reading! I am going to pass out your summarization owls. You can use these to help you summarize. Here is how we will summarize.

1) Delete and mark out unimportant or repeated information.

2) Find and highlight important information.

3) Form a topic sentence from the important information.

Don’t forget to look at your summarization owls as you summarize. You will better summarize a text when you read it slowly, read the important parts two times, and take notes as you read.

3. Say: Before we begin reading an article on snowy owls. I would like to introduce you to some new vocabulary words.

Prey
Hatch
Perch
Mate

Say: Let’s look at what the first word prey means. Prey is an animal hunted or caught for food. The mouse was prey to the cat. Could a lion be prey to a mouse? No, a lion is not prey to a mouse but a mouse could be prey to a lion. Fill in the missing word of the sentence: Some large birds prey upon _______. Great! Some large birds prey upon smaller birds or animals. The next word is hatch. Hatch is the birth, production, or emergence of young from an egg. The little bird would hatch from the egg in three days. Can someone give me a sentence with the word hatch in it? (allow for student’s to respond) Our third unfamiliar word is perch. A perch means a place to sit and rest. A perch could be a branch or something low on the ground. Like, The bird perched on a branch overlooking the forest. Our last word is mate. The action animals take to produce more of their kind. Like, Owls mate all year round. Now that we know important vocabulary words, we can better understand our reading on “Snowy Owl.” (Distribute “Snowy Owl” to each child).

4. Say: Today we are reading an article on “Snowy Owl” by Kids National Geographic and practice summarizing. Have you ever seen an owl in real life? They are very fascinating creatures. This article will explain where they live, what they eat, and about their young. We are going to read the second paragraph together. Let’s have our summarization owls handy. Let’s read and find out more about snowy owls!

Read:

“These large owls mainly live in the Arctic in open, treeless areas called tundra. Snowy owls perch on the ground or on short posts. From there they patiently watch for prey. Their favorite target is lemmings—small mouselike rodents—but they also hunt for other small rodents, rabbits, birds, and fish.”

5. Say: Watch me as I use my summarization rules to summarize this paragraph. (Project article on SmartBoard; grab a highlighter and a pencil) Let’s look at the first sentence: “These large owls mainly live in the Arctic in open, treeless areas called tundra.” Our first step and second step is to mark out unimportant and highlight important information. Do we think it is important that these are “large owls?” I would say it is not important in this paragraph. Let’s mark it out with a pencil. Lets look at the next part- “mainly live in the Arctic in open, treeless areas called tundra.” I think the only important information in this sentence is they mainly live in the “Arctic” and “in areas called tundras.” Let’s highlight those important details. The next part of the sentence, “in open, treeless areas” is not important right now. Let’s cross that out. The next sentence states, “Snowy owls perch on the ground or on short posts.” I think all of this is important except we can cross out “snowy owls” because we know what the article is talking about. In the sentence, “From there they patiently watch for prey.” We can delete “from there they patiently” and ask ourselves “What do they do?” They “watch for prey.” Let’s highlight “watch for prey.” The last sentence: “Their favorite target is lemmings—small mouselike rodents—but they also hunt for other small rodents, rabbits, birds, and fish.” It is important to point out the main prey they search for which are lemmings. Let’s highlight “lemmings.” The rest of the sentence is unimportant because it is describing what lemmings are. Does anyone know our last summarization step? Yes! It is to form a topic sentence with our important information.

6. Say: Now that we have finished the second paragraph, let’s try and create a topic sentence with the important information from the second paragraph. I have highlighted owls, live in the arctic, areas called tundra, perch on the ground or on posts, and watch for prey. After putting this information together my topic sentence is “These owls live in the Arctic tundra’s, perched on the ground or on short posts, searching for lemmings as prey.” As you can see, all of the important information is in one sentence.

7. Say: Now I would like you to finish reading “Snowy Owl” using the summarization rules. Use your “Summarization Owl” to help you. You are highlighting important information with your highlighter, crossing out unimportant information with your pencil, and creating a topic sentence for each paragraph. At the end you will combine each of your topic sentences to create a summary of the entire text. The summary will help you remember important facts about snowy owls. I will give you a sheet of paper to write your topic sentences and summary. (Distribute Summarization Template) After everyone finishes writing, we will have a quiz to see how much you remember about snowy owls.

8. Collect each student’s summary of the article, and evaluate the summarization using the summarization checklist (attached). Then, distribute comprehension question quiz (attached).