Miss Ayres

 

Transforming into Summarizing

 

 

 

 

 

Reading to Learn

Lauren Ayres

 

Rationale: The goal of reading is comprehension and understanding. Summarization is essential to understanding what one has read. This lesson can help students summarize by modeling helpful summarizing strategies and the concept of graphic organizers as a reminder of the strategies. The students will read about the process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly and hopefully be able to summarize what they have read by eliminating information that is not important.

 

Materials:

• Caterpillar to Butterfly by National Geographic’s Kids

• Tigers by National Geographic’s Kids to show how to take out unnecessary information

• Paper

• Pencils

• Highlighters

• Summarization Checklist:

                            Did the Student.... Yes or No?

                                  Get rid of unimportant information?

                                  Get rid of repeated information?

                                  Organize Items under One Umbrella Term?

                                  Select a topic?

                                  Write a topic statement that covers everything that is important from the passage of text?

 

Procedures:

1. Begin by asking, “Who can tell me what a summary is?” (Wait for students to answer) “All great answers. When we summarize a story, we are retelling it without telling the whole story. Let’s see if we can learn some important strategies to write summaries of our own.”

 

2. “Here I have a passage from Tigers. First I am going to read it silently to myself. Then I am going to go back through the passage and pick out the important parts. (Go through the first sentence or so of the passage on the smart-board and either underline the important parts or cross out the parts that don’t matter). The tiger is big, has stripes, and live in Africa. Not I am going to put these facts together in new sentences. (Write out a summary using the underlined important parts.)”

 

3. “Now let’s read the whole passage silently. When you’re done reading to yourself, you can either underline all the important parts or cross out the parts you don’t need; whatever works best for you.” (Allow reading and work time) “Now that everyone is finished, who can tell me one thing they underlined?” (Have students answer while you underline them on the smart board in front of the class.) “Now let’s use these underlined words and phrases to write a summary of the book.” (Ask for ideas on different ways to go about summarizing the story).

 

4. “So we have read the passage, noted what is important, and talked about different ways you can summarize; you are going to read about the butterfly and summarize on-your-own. National Geographic’s has written a book all about how the little caterpillar transforms into a beautiful butterfly! While reading about the butterfly you are likely to come across the word 'chrysalis'; this is the cocoon or house that the caterpillar makes for itself to live in until it has fully transformed into a butterfly. You might say 'the caterpillar left the chrysalis to begin it's life as a transformed creature.'"

 

5. "While you are reading, think about these questions. "What does the caterpillar do until it is ready to make a crysalis?" "How long does it remain in there?" "What are some key facts about the butterfly?" Now, let’s learn about the butterfly.”(Give students time to read and summarize).

 

Assessment: After summarizing, students will trade papers and check each other’s work using the checklist attached. They will discuss what their peers have done well and what they could use some work on. I will be moving throughout the classroom having individual observation time with each student making sure they grasp the concept.

 

References:

National Geographic’s Kids. Caterpillar to Butterfly. 

 

National Geographic’s Kids. Tigers. 

 

Thomas, Haley. You're a Bear-y Good Reader.

            http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/awakenings/thomasrl.htm