Reading to Learn | classroom

Reading to Learn: Summarization Station

By- Tay Tay Stroud

Rationale:

When students read silently they learn a lot of new information at one time. Students need comprehension strategies to understand all of the new information. Summarization is an important comprehension strategy. This lesson will teach children the how to summarize after they read a passage. Summarization is one of the many skills that children must possess while reading expository texts. Comprehension in reading is not only necessary, but also vital for students to learn because of reasons ranging from standardized testing to motivating them to read by growing their enjoyment for it. When students understand what they are reading, they are more likely to increase how much they read and explore articles, etc.

Materials:

-Poster with summarization rules to display:

-Get rid of unimportant information.
-Get rid of repeated information.

-Organize items and events under one umbrella term.

-Select a topic.

-Write a topic statement that covers everything that is important from the text.

Procedures:

1. I will begin the lesson by explaining to the students how important it is that we understand what we read. Say: "Good readers are not only fluent when they read, but they also understand what they read. This is called comprehension (write the word comprehension on the board). When you comprehend something that means that you understand it.

2. Say: "Who can tell me what a summary is? (wait time) A summary is a sentence that tells the main idea. Writing summaries is a great way to help you remember what you have read.”

3. Say: "Before we begin summarizing, let's look some words we will be reading: Conductor. A conductor means the person that is in charge of the train and train crew. A conductor would help the operations of a train go smoothly.

A conductors job would consist of making sure the engine had gas, the train was going the right way, and making sure all the other people working on the train are doing their jobs.

Finish this sentence: The conductor of a train is …

Possible completion: The person that is in charge of the operations of a train

4.Say: "Today we are going to become summarizers! We summarize articles, texts, and passages to make it easier to understand and to delete information that is not helpful. There are three important things for us to do when we summarize. First, we delete or take out all the unimportant information. Next, we make sure and reread the details we think are important and make sure we did not leave out anything important. Last, we put it together and make a statement that covers everything the author is saying about the article, passage, or text. Let's see if everyone remembers! What is the first step? Second step? Third? Great!"

5. Display the first paragraph of the article “All about trains”. Say: "To become great summarizers, you have to practice and follow the three steps we talked about. Today we are going to be reading about trains. Trains can carry many different things; some carry animals, some carry food, and some carry food and other goods that need to be taken other places. Lets read and find out more facts about trains! This passage gives us lots of information about trains and we are going to read it, find all the important information, and write a summary about the passage. How would I summarize a long and difficult passage that gives facts about trains? Let me show you!" "I'll cross out unimportant details, then highlight important ideas and put it all into 1 sentence. What's important?" Read the passage aloud to the students. "What the passage is talking about, what it is, and why they did not become extinct are all important parts of this paragraph."

6. Teacher will then select one of the other passages from the six in the lesson. This time the class will work as a whole to summarize the passage. The students will call out to the teacher as he/she writes the summary given to her by the students.

7. .Students now will be divided into small groups of five. Each group will be assigned a different passage to summarize. All of these passages should have been read by now. When summaries have been composed, allow each group to read aloud their summaries recreating new meanings to the passages. They should include only the most important details in each one of them.

8. I will review each student's topic sentence and their marking that they and on their article. When reviewing their work, I will use the summarization checklist to make sure that they are applying the summarization rules to their understanding of creating a topic sentence.

References:

Reading to Learn: Summarization Station – Joy Boldt

https://jdb0102.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn

Summarizing with the Switch to Gray- Molly Cranston

https://mcranz15.wixsite.com/mysite/rl-lesson-design

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