Reading to Learn
Swimming Into Summarization
Reading to Learn Design
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Rationale:
Once students are able to read fluently and independently, they are ready to understand how to summarize texts. There are multiple different methods that are used for summarization. The most effective is the about-point method. There are two questions asked when using this method: 1. What is the text about? and 2. What is the main point the writer is making about the topic? The author usually answers this question in the story, the student must use the story to answer the questions themselves. In other words, students should be able to identify the main idea(s) in the text.
Materials:
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Article by Time for Kids “Exploring Mars”
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Overhead
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Paper and pencil for students
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Comprehension quiz
Procedures:
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Say: “Today we are going to learn how to summarize what we are reading. Learning how to summarize can help us pick out what the main ideas of a story are. Whenever we are summarizing a text, we are going to be creating a shorter version of what we read. Let’s read what I wrote on the board. ‘My friends and I did not know what we wanted to eat for dinner. We had three choices of food: pizza, burgers, or hotdogs. We all chose to eat burgers for dinner.’ I can summarize this by saying ‘My friends and I ate burgers for dinner.’ I was able to condense the sentences into one thought. This is what we are going to practice doing today.”
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Say: “There is more than one method you can use to summarize. The strategy that we are going to use is called the about-point method. Remember, we must ask two questions when using this method: 1. What is the text about? and 2. What is the main point the writer is making about the topic? To answer these questions, we must think of an umbrella point from all the ideas that are in the story.
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Say: “I am going to show you how to use about-point summarization with our article about exploring Mars. Do you know what a rover is? [Let class answer]. That’s right! Rovers are vehicles that travel across the surface of Mars. The passage we are going to read talks about one of the jobs a rover may have on Mars.
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Say: “Here is the paragraph from our article. Let’s read it together.”
The rover’s main job is to find those fossils. But it will look for larger signs of past life, too. Rocky, wavy mounds might be found along the crater’s edges. If they’re similar to the ones on Earth, they could have been made by colonies, or groups, of microbes.
5. Say: “What is this paragraph about? That’s right! It talks about the main job of a rover and they type of terrain it works on on Mars. Great job! I want you all to finish reading the article using the about-point method and make topic sentences for each paragraph. When this is complete, you will have made a shortened version of the article yourself. We will also take a short quiz.”
Assessment:
Collect student summaries and use the following checklist to evaluate:
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Student created a topic sentence for each paragraph.
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Student reduced original length and ideas of the original text.
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Student arranged the topic sentences in an organized way.
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How long was the rover’s journey to Mars?
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What is the rover’s main job?
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What was the hidden message NASA created in the rover’s parachute?
References:
https://anneclupo.wixsite.com/my-site-1/reading-to-learn
https://sites.google.com/view/reading-to-learn-design/reading-to-learn?authuser=0
Resources:
https://www.timeforkids.com/g56/exploring-mars-2/?rl=en-800
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