Miss. Sykes' Website 

Rationale: Once your students have learned to read fluently and accurately, they must move on to the next level, which is the lifelong skill of reading and comprehending the information in the text. It is important for students to learn how to summarize what they are reading and showing that they are truly comprehending what they read. This lesson will focus on reading comprehension and summarizing. When a student learns how to summarize, they show that they understand how to remove trivial and necessary information from the text. We will learn how to comprehend texts by using specific steps that have been effective in the classroom.

 

Materials:

●      Pencil

●      Paper

●      Highlighter

●      White Board

●      Dry Erase Marker

●      Sheet of blank paper for summarizing rules

●      Sheet of lined paper for summarizing articles

●      Copies of the article “Lions” from National Geographic Kids (One copy for each student)

●      Rubric for Grading Summaries

●      Overhead Camera

●      SmartBoard

 

Procedures:

1. Let’s start off the lesson by teaching our students what it means to summarize. Say: “Alright students, today we are going to learn how to summarize an article. When we summarize, we are able to understand what we just read. This is when you look at the entire passage you have read and then shrink it down to specific information or key events that have the most meaning in the passage. We will practice summarizing with an article about Lions. We are going to focus on figuring out what the main idea is, what facts support the main idea, and what information can be removed.

 

2. Say: Okay, now we need to learn the rules on how to summarize. Did everyone come up and receive a piece of paper to fill in the rules as we learn them? Good. I am going to write each rule on the white board and I want you to copy each rule onto your own paper. When we finish writing down all of our helpful summarizing tips, you can leave this piece of paper on your desk and use it to help you as you read your articles to help you summarize as you read.

 

3.  Say: Here are our 3 Summarization Tips

●      Tip #1: Pick out the most important details by underlining or highlighting them.

●      Tip #2: Find the repeated details that are unimportant and cross them out.

●      Tip #3: Organize the information you found in tip #1 by writing sentences about them.

 

4.  Say: Our main idea of the story is supported by the details. Now, I want you to write these steps on the paper I gave to each of you. [Ask your students to recall the tips to you as they write the tips down on their paper.] Then, the students will write down some key points to remember about summarizing on the bottom of their paper. For example, summaries will always be shorter in length than the passage you are summarizing.

 

5. Say: Okay class, can anyone tell me what sound a lion makes? [wait for students to respond] Right! Lions are growly and ferocious, but did you know they’re actually really social in their community? Today, we are going to read an article called “Lions”. We will read it together to figure out why lions are considered social animals. While we read, I want you to follow along on your copy. We are going to highlight what we think is an important main idea, cross out any information that we think we may be unimportant to the main idea, and organize our information we found important to write a topic sentence. [Use smartboard to read through article with class].

 

6. After reading the article, review vocabulary. “Did anyone notice a long word in that last paragraph that was hard to understand? Did anyone else see the word prey? Prey means an animal that is hunted and killed by another for food. [Write word and definition on the board]. Can someone give me an example of an animal that a lion might prey on? Can someone give me a sentence using the word prey in the right way? [Wait for student response]. That’s great! Alright, now that we have discussed this article, we are all going to write three sentences summarizing this article as a class. Call on your students to help them write sentences, and write their suggested sentences on the SmartBoard.

 

7.  Now, pass out “Giant Panda” to the class. This article is all about the life of the Panda, what it eats, where it lives, and what it looks like. As we read the article, remember to highlight the important information and cross out any unimportant information. After each paragraph,  write a sentence to summarize that paragraph and ask yourself: What’s important? What’s the point? [When your students finish reading, stop them]. Alright, let’s practice summarizing the second paragraph. [Use overhead camera to display passage].

 

8. Now that I have shown you what an example of important information, I want you all to look at the rest of the article and highlight and cross out the information that you think is most important. I will walk around to see how you are doing. Let me know if you are having any trouble. Try your best to find the most important information.

 

9. Everyone is doing great so far! After you have read and found the main ideas, I want you to write a paragraph to briefly summarize the article. After that, look back through the article and find four words that you have never read before. Try and guess what you think each word means and write down your definition. If you have any questions I will be here to help.

 

 

Assessment:

Students will be assessed on how well they did their summaries. This is the scoring rubric for grading it:

 

Did he/she:                                                                                   Y    N

Remove unimportant information?

Organize items and events together?

Find a main idea?

Highlight important information?

Write a topic sentence to go along with the main idea?

List 4 new vocab words with definitions at the end?

 

I will also ask the students some basic comprehension questions to see how well they understood the article.

 

References:

 

Beck, Mary Margaret - Piggies, Please… and Summaries! http://marymargaretbeck1.wixsite.com/missbecksclass/reading-to-learn-lesson-plan

 

Murray, Bruce- Reading Genie Website

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/connections.html

 

National Geographic Kids Magazine- “Lions”

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/lion/#ww-wild-cats-lion.jpg

 

National Geographic Kids Magazine- “Giant Pandas”

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/giant-panda/#giant-panda-eating.jpg

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