Reading to Learn 4th-8th
Summarizing with Sea Lions
Rationale:
The ultimate goal of reading is the ability to understand the message of the test. Once students master reading fluently, they can then focus their mental resources and energy on comprehension. It is important for readers to understand what they read and summarization is a good strategy to accomplish this. Summarization requires readers to reduce a large text piece into a concise message. This strategy is beneficial for reading comprehension. In this lesson, students will read an expository text and summarize it. The teacher will check for understanding on the material through administering comprehension questions to the students.
Materials:
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Pencils
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Paper
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Highlighters
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Red pens (to mark passages with)
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Dry-erase board
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Dry-erase markers
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Passage sample displayed on SmartBoard from “National Geographic for Kids: California Sea Lion” (introduction paragraph and picture)
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Classroom copies of full article “National Geographic for Kids: California Sea Lion”
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Rubric for summarization
Procedure:
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Say: “Today we will be talking about summarization! What do you think it means to summarize a story? (allow students to make inferences or explain what they know about it) Summarizing means picking out the most important details from a story and saying or writing it in your own words. When I say ‘important details’ I mean things like big important characters, main ideas or statistics, and any other something that an main character may do depending on what you are reading. When you summarize something, you are retelling the story without all the small unimportant details. We use summarization with long passages, articles, or books because it helps you break it down so that you can remember it!”
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Say: “I’ve given each of you an article from National Geographic about California sea lions. California sea lions are semi-aquatic mammals that eat fish, squids, and other shell-fish. They live in North American on the western coast. There are so many cool and interesting facts that make them special! We are going to read the first paragraph together, and I will show you how you could summarize it. We need to pretend to be investigative scientist while reading this article so we can learn all about California sea lions and what makes them unique! Follow along with me as I read the first paragraph out loud.”
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Say: “Okay, who wants to tell me a summary of this paragraph you could think of in your head? (Give students the opportunity to share and then write them on the board.) Okay, those look pretty good! Now I am going to put my written summary on the SmartBoard so you can see how I did it! Notice how I highlighted the big facts and crossed out the little less important facts.”
These sea lions are an intelligent and social species. They gather or rock-like structures. These structures can be man-made structures or beaches or other rocky areas.
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Say: “To review, the first sentence will tell us what the paragraph will be about. Our first sentence introduced the fact that sea lions are intelligent and very social creatures. It is important to know that they are intelligent and social, so I highlighted that. The next part talked about how they like to sit on top of tall rock-like structures, I also highlighted this part but crossed out the information talking about the many different types of rock-like structures because that is not generally important. So you can see that some information in this paragraph is more important than other information in the paragraph, and identifying it correctly will help us summarize more effectively. Now, I want you to try it on your own.”
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Say: “Alright, before you begin to read and summarize the next paragraph, I am going to hand you each a red pen and a highlighter. These tools can help you tremendously to keep your facts straight and the main idea in your mind. When you come across something that you believe to be super important, I want you to highlight it. When it doesn’t seem important, take your red pen and draw a line through it.”
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Say: “When you have finished reading and marking in the article, I want you to write down a summary that is less than 5 sentences. Remember to only include the main details and ideas. Don’t use anything that you crossed out while reading, only use the highlight portions. I want you to write your summaries using correct grammar. Most importantly, do not simply copy the text as it is. You must put it in your own words.”
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Before you start your reading, let’s go over a couple vocabulary words you will see within the passage so you can be familiar with them.” (write them on the board along with the definition and an example.)
Jetties= a landing stage or small pier at which boats can dock.
Semi-aquatic= animal living partly on land and partly in water.
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Say: “After you finish your summarizations, please come and put them on the desk in the front of the room. Okay go ahead and begin your work. If you need help please ask me, and remember to try your best.”
Assessment:
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What size groups do the California Sea Lions travel in?
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What do the sea lions look like?
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How deep can they swim and for about how long can they stay underwater?
Rubric:
Student clearly read the article completely and used information from various paragraphs throughout.
___/2
Student picked out information using the method that was modeled in class.
___/3
Student deleted unimportant details.
___/1
Student wrote a short paragraph summarizing most important details form the article.
___/4
Total points and additional comments:____/10
References:
“California Sea Lion” article
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/california-sea-lion/#
Emily James
http://emjames77.wixsite.com/portfolio/reading-to-learn
Anna Bahme
http://abahme14.wixsite.com/myeportfolio/reading-to-learn-design
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