Swinging into Summarization
Reading to Learn
Rationale: After readers learn to read fluently and correctly, they arrive at comprehension, the final step in becoming a successful reader. This is accomplished by distinguishing the difference between important information in the text from the information that is less significant. The point of this lesson is to teach students to summarize, which is an essential skill in reading comprehension. Summarization includes the skill of superordination or finding an umbrella term for the events that happen in the text. This lesson will teach students how to summarize the text as well as how to demonstrate their understanding of what they are reading.
Materials:
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Construction paper
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Crayons
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Vocabulary words (prohibited, prehensile, robust)
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“Spider Monkey” National Geographic Article
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Whiteboard
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Dry erase marker
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Highlighter
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Summarization Creation Worksheet
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Pencil
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Paper
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Comprehension questions (1. Do spider monkeys have opposable thumbs? 2. What do spider monkeys like to eat? 3. How did spider monkeys get their name?) written on white board.
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Assessment checklist
Procedures:
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Start by explaining the importance of summarization: “Sometimes when we read a text, it can be a little overwhelming to take in all of the details and points. We could spend all day trying to memorize the words and messages in the text, but being the rockstar readers that we are, we do not want to waste our time going over texts too many times. So, instead of memorizing every little detail, we use summarization strategies to remember the important points the author is conveying about the topic. As a result, we transform a text that may have hundreds or thousands of words to a compact gist that is easy to remember.”
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Say “Today we are going to Swing into Summarization by reading an article about swinging spider monkeys. Before I hand out the articles, let’s talk about spider monkeys. Does anyone know anything about spider monkeys? (Allow time for students to give answers) Before reading our articles, we need to review some important vocabulary words you will encounter in the text: prohibited, prehensile, and robust. Prohibited means that something has been stopped or banned. Something that is prohibited cannot be done anymore. For example, If I say you are all prohibited from talking today, you would all have to stay silent all day long! Our next word, prehensile, means capable of grasping or holding. For example, an iguana has a prehensile tail because it can curl around things and hold them. Out last vocabulary word to review is robust. Robust means healthy and strong. We could use this word in a sentence that says, “The young boy is very robust” meaning that he is healthy and strong!”
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Say “I have written the words on the board in case you need to look back at them for a reminder of what they mean. Let’s practice using them to make sure we understand what they mean. I am going to write a sentence on the board and I want you to write on your whiteboards what you think the word is, you can work with a partner for this activity. (Write on board, “The teacher will ___ the students from talking today”). Okay, show me your boards. (Allow time for students to show their boards. If any student wrote the incorrect word, review the meaning of the word). Okay, let’s try another word. (Write on board, “The iguana has a ___ tail”). Okay, let’s see your answers. (Allow time for students to show their boards. If any student wrote the incorrect word, review the meaning of the word). Okay, let’s try one more word. (Write on board, “The little boy is very ___”). Okay, let’s see your answers. (Allow time for students to show their boards. If any student wrote the incorrect word, review the meaning of the word.)
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(Hand out construction paper and crayons) Say: “The last thing we need to do before we summarize our article is to learn some rules that we need to follow in order to become expert summarizers. These rules are easy to remember, but we need to write them down, so we don’t forget them! At the top of your construction paper I need you to write the word “Rules” and then directly under that write “#1 delete”. What do you think the first rule, delete, means? (Allow time for students to answer). “As we discussed earlier, when we are summarizing we don’t want to tell the whole story, so we need to delete the information that isn’t important. Now under the first rule write “#2 shorten”. What do you think shorten means? (Allow time for students to answer). “Shorten means that we are going to make the long parts shorter. So, once we have deleted the parts that weren’t important and found the parts that are important, we are going to shorten the long important parts. This is so the passage can be quickly understood. Let’s practice shortening a sentence. If I gave you the sentence “We talked about Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter during class today.” We could shorten it by saying, “We talked about the seasons during class today.” This way, we shortened our summary and kept important ideas. The last rule we are going to write is “#3 create”. Once we have deleted the information that isn’t important and shortened the long parts, we will need to create a main idea sentence for the paragraph.”
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Say: “We are first going to practice summarizing together then you will try it on your own. (Hand out the spider monkey article) “You have each just received a spider monkey article, I need you to read the whole article then we will come back together as a class once everyone has finished.” (Allow time for students to read the article.) “Now that we have read the article, what do you think we should do next? (allow time for answers) “Correct, we need to delete the unimportant information!” The first sentence seems to be important, right? It says, “Spider monkeys have long, thin arms with hook-like hands that allow them to swing through trees” This is something that is important, so we are not going to delete it. Instead, let’s get our highlighters out and highlight it so we know that it is important. Now can someone find a sentence that seems to be less important? A sentence that we could delete from our summary? (allow time for answers) “Yes! The sentence in the 5th paragraph that says ‘All brown-headed spider monkey infants are born with a pink face and ears’ is a cute fact, but I do not think we have to know that about them. Let’s take our pencils and mark through it so we remember it is not an important sentence.”
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Say: “Now let’s practice our second rule of shortening. In the second paragraph, the article reads ‘During the day, the spider monkey searches for fruit, which makes up the main part of its diet. They will also eat flowers, seeds, bark, leaves, and small insects during the dry season when the fruit isn’t available.’ Let’s see if we can shorten this information. Can anybody think of some words that encompass all of these different foods that the monkey eats? (allow time for answers). “Yes, bugs, seeds, plants are all words to describe these foods. So, to shorten this sentence for summarization, we only need the important facts. To put it in more general words, I can say “Spider monkeys love fruit, and search for it during the day. However, spider monkeys also survive on bugs, seeds, and plants.” (Write new sentence on board). I still give the reader similar information but in more general words. This is an example of how we can shorten while summarizing.”
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Say: “Now let’s practice our last step which is create. This involves making a sentence that captures the main idea of the paragraph. We want to make one sentence for each paragraph without losing any of the important information. I will show you how to do this using the sentence I wrote a second ago. (Look at sentence written on board). “This is two sentences that I need to form into one sentence. This paragraph discusses what the spider monkey eats which is the main idea. I am going to create a new sentence that captures this main idea.” (Write on board, cross out unused information.) “Spider monkeys love fruit but can also survive on bugs, seeds, and plants.’ (Write the new sentence on the board for students to follow your reasoning.) This new sentence deletes unnecessary information, shortens the old sentence, and focuses on the main topic of the paragraph.”
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(Pass out summarization worksheet) Say: Now that you know what summarizing an article looks like, I want you to finish summarizing the article on your own. I have given each of you a Summarization Creation Worksheet that I want each of you to use while summarizing this article. In each column you are going to write the main idea sentences you create. I will walk around to make sure you are on the write track. When you have finished your summarization worksheet, turn it in and begin working on the comprehension questions that I have written on the board on a separate piece of paper.”
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Once students have turned in their worksheets I will assess their word using the assessment checklist below.
Summarization Creation Worksheet
Paragraph # Main Idea Sentence
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1 ______________________________________________________
2 ______________________________________________________
3 ______________________________________________________
4 ______________________________________________________
5 ______________________________________________________
6 ______________________________________________________
7 ______________________________________________________
8 ______________________________________________________
Assessment Checklist
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Did the student fill out the summarization chart on their paper?
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Did the student create a topic sentence for each paragraph?
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Did the student successfully delete unimportant information?
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Did the student successfully identify important information?
Comprehension Questions Written on the Board
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Do spider monkeys have opposable thumbs?
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What do spider monkeys like to eat?
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How did spider monkeys get their name?
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Where do spider monkeys spend the first 16 weeks of their life?
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What kind of memories do spider monkeys have?
Resources:
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Spider Monkey Article: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/spider-monkey
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Hicks, Emily: Swinging into Summarization https://erh0014.wixsite.com/elyssahicks/reading-to-learn-lesson-design
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Murray, Bruce. (2012). Making Sight Words.
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