(EN) Danger! Need Help With Summarization!

Neala Casey

Rationale: Once children have learned to read accurately and fluently, they must move on to the next step in reading. The goal of reading comprehension, and the next step in reading is reading to learn. This lesson focuses on summarizing, a strategy to help students begin to read to learn. This lesson will help students learn to summarize by teaching them to delete trivial and redundant information and focus on the important parts of a text.

Materials:

Article: Were Alligators Almost Extinct? From Discovery Kids (class set and one for teacher)
Blank Bookmark shapes like a ice cream cone
Markers (One pack per group)
Poster with summarizing Rules:

When summarizing, did the student…

Underline important information

Pencil and Paper (For each student)
Reading Comprehension Questions
Assessment Chart

Procedure:

1. Say: Today we are going to talk about a strategy to help us comprehend what we are reading. Who remembers what it means to comprehend? (Call on student.) That’s right! It does mean to understand the message of what you are reading. I hope that by the end of this lesson you will all be able to summarize texts very easily. Summarizing a text means to pick out the most important information of a text and then make it into a short paragraph or essay. It is so important that you learn how to summarize because we use summaries every day! An example of how we use summaries is when I want to share a book I read with you all. I would have to think of the most important events that occurred, to share a good summary of what happened in the book!

2. Say: Before we learn more about how to summarize, let’s review some vocabulary before we read the article. The two new words that we will learn, in this article, are endangered species and predators. Let’s first look at what the word endangered species means. Endangered species is any type of plant or animal that is in danger of disappearing forever. Animals that could soon become extinct, are put on the endangered list so people can help preserve the animals left surviving.

Is a mammoth extinct or endangered? Exactly, they are extinct because they no longer exist! Now can you finish the sentence: An example of an endangered animal is? (possible answers: mountain gorilla, giant panda, walrus, etc. The next vocabulary word we are going to learn is predator. A predator is any animal that hunts and kills other animals primarily for food. For example, a lion is a deer’s predator since the lion hunts deer. The word predator is not used correctly if someone was talking about two fish swimming in the sea together because neither of them hunt the other. Which would be an example of predator: A dog trying to catch a squirrel or a bunny and racoon exploring a garden? That’s right, the dog trying to catch the squirrel! Now can you finish the sentence: Flies have several predators, some of them are ... (possible answers: frog, spider, humans, etc.)

3. Say: Now that we have reviewed our vocabulary, let’s go back to talking about summarizing. (Show the class the summarizing rules poster.) You all have a ice cream cone bookmark and markers on your desks. I want you to write down each rule as we talk about them and then at the end of the lesson I will give you all a few minutes to color your bookmark. This will help us all remember the rules of summarization. The first rule of summarizing is: find important information. Go ahead and write that down. (Allow writing time.) This means that that when you see something that you think is important to know you should underline it or maybe write down a key word or phrase. The second rule of summarizing is: remove unimportant or repeated information. Go ahead and write that down. (Allow writing time.) This means that if you see something that is not crucial for the meaning of the text or it is repeated information, you may draw an “X” through it (However, do not write it in a textbook.) The third rule of summarizing is: write a topic sentence. Write that on your bookmark. (Allow writing time.) It means that once you've picked out the parts of the text that are important (what the paragraph is about and what the point is), you combine them to create a topic sentence. This topic sentence captures all the important parts of a paragraph within a text.

4. Pass out copies of “Were alligators almost extinct?” and display a copy on the board. Give a book talk for “Were alligators almost extinct?” Book talk: Did you guys knows alligators were once on the endangered species list? Back in the 60s people use to hunt alligators so much they drove them to be on the list. Since 1967, alligators have come off the list and are no longer endangered! The question is how they did do it when so many other animals cannot?

5. Now we are going to practice summarizing as a class. Let’s look at the first part of the article: “American alligators were nearly hunted to extinction in the 1950s and 1960s, and in 1967, officially were under protection of the Endangered Species Act” Thankfully after being added to the endangered list, alligators started to reproduce. Alligators style of breeding is what caused in a huge burst in population, which led to them being removed from the endangered list.”

Ok so I want everyone to be following along with me and paying attention to how I follow these rules. Let’s look at the first sentence: “American alligators were nearly hunted to extinction in the 1950s and 1960s, and in 1967, officially were under protection of the Endangered Species Act..” Do you think anything in this sentence is important? (Discuss) Yes, alligators being once on the endangered list is especially important because that is the title of the article. (Make an X through the remaining words in the sentence) Let’s keep reading: “Twenty years later, the American alligator was delisted from endangered status because the population had fully recovered.” Is anything in this sentence important? (Discuss) Yes this sentence will help summarize since the article talks about how they were delisted! The next two sentences: “Most people attribute this relatively quick recovery to the unique breeding behaviors of alligators. Alligators breed in the spring.” What do you see important here? (Discuss) Yes, mentioning that alligators breed in spring is important, but I see something that is more important than that; can anyone tell me what it is? Yes, where it says, “unique breeding behaviors of alligators” is important, so I am going to underline that. So now that we have applied rules 1 and 2 of summarizing to this paragraph, I am going to demonstrate how to use rule 3 and create a topic sentence using the parts I underlined. I’ve got alligators, endangered list, and unique breeding behaviors. Now I need to make this into a sentence that makes sense. My topic sentence is: “Alligators were taken off the endangered list because of their unique breeding behaviors. Does everyone understand what I just did? Does anyone have any questions?

6. Say: Now I am going to let you all practice summarizing with the rest of this article. I want you to go through each 5 or so sentences and break it down like we just did. Be sure to follow the rules for summary and then change the order around in your topic sentence. I want you to write at least four topic sentences for this article. When you are finished, staple your article to your paper with the topic sentences and turn it in. Then you may continue decorating your bookmark.

Assessment:

I will review each student’s topic sentence as well for the entire article as the marking on each of their articles. I will use the assessment checklist for each student listened above to know whether each student followed the rules and understood how to summarize accordingly.

Also, I will ask three-comprehension question for a Reading Comprehension check at the end:

1. Describe what an alligator’s nest looks like.

2. What role does temperature have with alligator eggs?

3. Why does the momma alligator need to protect her eggs?

Assessment Checklist

When Summarizing, did the student…

Yes No

Underline important information?

Remove unimportant information?

Find the main idea or topic?

Write a sentence summarizing the important parts of the passage?

References: