Reading to Learn Design
Waddle into Summarization
Summarization is one of the key strategies our students need for comprehending text. An effective method of summarizing is called about-point. This strategy asks two main questions about the text. a) What is the text about? This question identifies the topic and prepares us to form our topic sentence in our summary paragraph. b) What is the main point the author is trying to make? Since the author usually makes several points, the reader should find an umbrella term that covers all the small points the author is making. We can do this by crossing out unimportant information and highlighting big key points throughout the text. The main point becomes the subject of the topic sentence. The teacher will model how to detect important information that is needed to write a summary. Teacher
Materials: White board & marker Student Materials: Pencils, paper, individual copies of the article “Emperor Penguin,” summarization checklist, comprehension quiz, rubrics for assessment
1. Say: “Today we are going to learn how to summarize. Raise your hand if you have ever read an article or a book and then wanted to tell your mom or dad all about it! Did you read them the whole story all over, or did you just tell them a short story of all the big parts? Right! When we are telling someone about a book or article, we only tell them about the most important parts of the story. This is called summarizing. Good readers use summarization strategies to remember only the important points the author is making about the topic. When we do this, we take a story that may have hundreds or thousands of words to form a short story that is easy to remember. This skill also makes it easier for us to comprehend or understand what we read."
2. Say: “The best way to summarize is called about-point. In about-point, you ask yourself an easy question and a tough question, and you use your answers to make a topic sentence. The easy question is "What is the text about?" The tough question is "What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?" To answer this question, you have to think of an umbrella term for all the important points the writer is telling you.” *Write questions on the board for the students to refer to* Say: “We are going to learn how to approach the about-point strategy using a paragraph today. First, we need to discuss two important vocabulary words that you’ll be reading: regurgitate and courtship. The first word we are going to go over is regurgitate. Regurgitate means to bring swallowed food up again to the mouth. For example, “The bird regurgitated the worm to feed her baby.” The second word is courtship, a period during which a couple develop a romantic relationship, especially with a view to marriage. For example, a husband and wife spent time in courtship before they decided to get married. Say: “Now that we are familiar with those words, we will look at a paragraph from the article together. I am going to read a short passage to show you how to ask yourself questions while reading a story and delete and unimportant/repeated information." After I finish modeling to my students, I will pass out the short article on Emperor Penguins. BOOKTALK: This article is about emperor penguins and where they live and how they survive on many clever adaptations. Penguins are a type of bird that is flightless and breeds in the winter. They have a courtship that lasts for several weeks. Let us read the article to learn more about how a penguin is born and learns to live on their own. Now, I want you to read this story, on penguins, to yourself and quietly practice asking yourself questions while you read. Also, think about the information that is repeated that you could cross out.
3. Say: "I am going to draw a web on the chart paper. This web will help us organize our important thoughts and main points from Emperor Penguin. Who can tell me where I should write the main topic from our article in our web? (Wait for student response). Good job! It does go in the center. So, the main topic of our story is Emperor Penguins. Let us discuss the important details in the article. There are a few to discuss. 1. They spend their entire lives on Antarctic ice and in its waters. 2. After the several week courtships, a female emperor penguin lays one single egg and leaves. 3. The daddy penguin stands for about 65 days, through icy temperatures, until the female returns with regurgitated food to take care of the chicks." [When making web, be sure to draw a line from the center circle and write each point at the end of the line.] While students tell me their ideas, I will record them on the web. "We can use this web we have made to help us summarize the article by making sentences out of some of our responses." Then I will have students come up with a topic sentence using the information from the web.
4. I will review each student’s topic sentence page to determine if they successfully summarized the paragraphs of the article. I will use the assessment checklist to record student grades. The students will also take a brief comprehension quiz.
Did I…
__ Write my topic sentence?
__ Find supporting details to help answer the question?
__ Remove unimportant information by marking it out?
__ Remove repeated ideas?
__ Create a 3-5 sentence summary?
Did the student…
__ Write a topic sentence for each paragraph
__ Collect important information/ deleted unimportant or repetitive information
__ Significantly reduce the text from the original
__ Successfully conjoin the important points to form a topic sentence
1. Where do Emperor Penguins live?
2. Can these penguins fly?
3. Who takes care of the egg before it hatches?
4. How long does it take for a penguin egg to hatch?
5. When leaving to go fish, they leave in groups called ____.
6. When do penguins begin to fish? “
Emperor Penguin” https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/empero r-penguin#emperor-penguin-group-snow.jpg Murray, Bruce. Using About-Point to Awaken the Main Idea https://murraba.wixsite.com/reading-lessons/rl
