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Reading to Learn

Stepping Into Summariziation

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Rationale:

Comprehension is a vital attribute to a student’s reading development.  When a student reads for comprehension, they are no longer spending time decoding words, instead, they are focused on understanding the message of the text. Summarization is a great way to test a child’s comprehension. In this lesson, students will practice summarization. The students will summarize text by selecting important information and eliminating unnecessary details. These rules will be used to guide children while they attempt to summarize text: detect and mark out unimportant or repeated information, find and highlight important information, and form a topic sentence from the important information.

 

Materials:

    •    Paper for each student

    •    Pencils for each student

    •    Highlighters for each student

    •    Individual copies of the article: “Kids Help Elephants” written for kids 

    •    SmartBoard or white board and writing utensil for teacher use

    •    Poster of Summarizing Rules: Delete and mark out unimportant or repeated information; Find and highlight important information; Form a topic sentence from the important information

    •    Assessment Checklist

    •    Comprehension Quiz

 

Procedures:

 

1. Say: Has anyone ever read a book they enjoyed so much, they had to tell their friends about it? When you told them about the book, did you tell them about every page or just say the important parts of the story? [Call on a student who has their hand raised.] Yes, that’s right, you only told them the important parts of the story! This strategy is called summarizing. Summarizing is a skill that helps the reader better understand the story and is a way to describe the story to someone who hasn't read it.

2. Say: When using summarization skills, we have a few rules to follow. [Have the poster displayed somehow.] The first rule is to delete and mark out unimportant or repeated information. To do that, we read through the entire article and then we delete any information that is unnecessary or is repeated. Next, we need to find and highlight important information Finally, we take all of those important parts of the article or story and we create a topic sentence to begin our summary.

3. Say: One good way to organize your thoughts and summarize is to find an “umbrella term.” An example of this would be if I was reading a passage that told me about different types of fish such as bass, sailfish, marlin, jack and tarpon, my umbrella term could be fish, because they are all different types of fish.   

4.Say: Now I am going to show you how I would use these summarization guidelines with the first paragraph of an article about kids helping elephants. Have any of you ever seen an elephant in real life? Have you ever thought that you could be of any help to an elephant? Today, you are going to find out if and how you could help an elephant! 

5. Say:  Here is the first paragraph from the story:
“Thanks in part to the hard work of three young girls, the Hong Kong government began May 15 to destroy the majority of its stockpile of confiscated elephant ivory. Nellie Shute, age 12, Christina Seigrist, age nine, and Lucky Lan Skrine, age 11, were attending international schools in Hong Kong when they learned what was happening to elephants. They formed the group Elephant Angels and collected more than 18,000 signatures asking the government to destroy the ivory.”

This paragraph is about three girls who attended international schools who learned about what was happening to elephants. [Explain any unfamiliar words or words the children may not be able to understand the context]. Was there any information that you thought was unnecessary in this passage? [wait for a student to respond] Right! We can delete the part where it says “thanks in part to the hard work of three young girls”! Is the number of girls important? Not really, right? We can delete that information. Now, if I look at the information that is left, I can come up with an umbrella term for all of this information to go under. I think the main message of this passage is saving the elephants and their ivory tusks, so I’m going to make my umbrella term “saving the elephants”. Using the information that is left and my umbrella term, I can make a really good topic sentence: “The government in Hong Kong destroyed the rest of the elephant tusks that were stolen thanks to the help of Elephant Angels.”

Being able to summarize this paragraph will help me in the end!  

6. Say: Before you read the rest of the article, let’s go over some of our vocabulary words. Being familiar with new vocabulary words will help you have a better understanding of the meaning of the article.
7. Say: Now I want you to practice summarizing. We’re going to read the rest of the article and see if we can help the elephants too! I want you to practice using the summarization guidelines to summarize this article. If you need help, first look at the poster, second, ask a neighbor, third, ask me! Summarization works best when you read the article slow, read the important parts at least two times, and take notes as you go. 

 

Vocabulary List:

International– existing, occurring, or carried on between two or more nations. (Example Sentence: Students who attend school with us from a different country are interational students.)

Confiscated – take away someone else’s property with authority. (Example Sentence: I confiscated the student’s pocket knife because they were not supposed to have weapons at school.)

tusks – a long pointed tooth that comes out of an animal’s closed mouth as in the elephant, walrus or wild boar. (Example Sentence: The elephant used his tusks to fight off the lion trying to eat his young.)

illegally – to do something that is forbidden by set laws. (Example Sentence: Jonny took money from the bank illegally.)

poaching – to kill, hunt or steal animals without the landowner’s permission. (Example Sentence: People overseas use poaching to gain articles from animals that they can sell to make money.)

petition – a formal written request that is signed by many people that is appealed or agreed upon by an authority figure to a particular cause. (Example Sentence: The students signed a petition to rid the idea of homework every afternoon.)

accomplishments – something that has been achieve successfully. (Example Sentence: When the student moved up to the next grade, he knew then he had gained a great accomplishment.)
 

[The following is an example of a vocabulary review for the word illegally: First, define the word and read the example sentence above. Then ask sample questions using the word and have students complete sentence fragments.]

i.    What is an example of something that is illegal?


ii.   Are all bad doings illegal?


iii.  Stealing is illegal because….


iv.  Someone that might catch someone for doing something illegal might be?

 

Assessment Checklist:

Collect each student’s summary of the article and evaluate the summarization using the following checklist.

________ Collected important information

________ Ignored trivia and examples in summary

________ Significantly reduced the text from the original

________ Sentences brought ideas together from each paragraph

________ Sentences organized coherently into essay form

 

Comprehension Quiz:

Name: _________________________

    1. Where were the girls at when they created the petition called Elephants Angels?

    2. Why were the elephants such an important topic in Hong Kong?
 

    3. What did the results of the girls’ petition suggest?

    4. What other things have the girls and other people done in order to save the elephants from poachers?
 

    5. What has the most recent petition led the girls to do next?

 

 

References:

 

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/nature/angels-help-elephants/#kids-help-elephants-shute.jpg

 

Caitlyn Brown, Stomping Into Summarization

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Return to Applications: http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/applications/

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