Reading to Learn

Swimming with Summaries!

Taylor Striblin

Rationale:

In this lesson, children will learn how to read expository texts in order to gather information. Strengthening reading comprehension while reading text for information is the next step after learning to read text fluently. Having students summarize expository text allows the teacher to assess students’ understanding of the text. It is important for students to learn how to summarize without trivial information, leaving behind only important information of the text. This lesson is designed for students to practice comprehension skills and summarization without trivial details.

Materials:

• Pencils

• Paper

• Highlighter

• Smart board

• Rubric for grading summaries

• Comprehension Questions

• “Sea Turtles” National Geographic Kids article

Procedures:

1. Say: “Today, we will work on summarization and practice how to summarize a text on Green Sea Turtles from National Geographic Kids. Summarizing is a wonderful tool to use after reading a text. When summarizing, you only want to state the most importation information of the text and leave behind any information that is not important (trivial), or repeated information. We will try to focus on the main idea and facts that support that idea in this article. We will leave out unimportant information.”

2. Say: “Now, I am going to pass out a stack of papers and I would like for everyone to take one sheet. Watch me as I show you how to fold the paper into four sections. First, take the paper and fold it hamburger style, then fold it again hot dog style. [Do demonstration.] Your paper should be split into four sections now. [Show your own paper split up]. Okay, now it is your turn! I will be walking around if you need help.”

3. Say: “Now that everyone has folded their paper, let’s go over why we are folding our paper like this. We’ll be using it as a study card for the steps of making a summary. You can use this whenever you need help summarizing articles. The first step in summarization is picking out the most important details and underlining or highlighting them. The second step is finding the repeated details that are unimportant and crossing them out. The third step is to make an umbrella term, for example if you had dogs, cats, and fish you would put those under the “pet” category. Now it is your turn to try: if you had orange juice, soda, and hot chocolate, what category would they be under? Right, they would all be under the “drinks” category. Finally, the fourth step is organizing the information you found in step one and creating a topic sentence. The main idea should be supported by the details. Now, write these steps on a page in your study card. [Ask students to recall the steps to you as you have them write the steps in their cards.] The last page of your study card will be for information that you need to remember about summarizing. For instance, summaries should always be shorter in length than the information you are summarizing.”

4. Say: “Now I am going to pass out the article. This article is about green sea turtles. We will summarize the first paragraph together. Have you ever wondered about how long green sea turtles can stay under water? Have you ever thought to yourself, “I wish I knew how big green turtles are!” Does anyone know how big green sea turtles are? Good guess! Does anyone know where a green sea turtle lives? I love that answer! We are going to have to read the article to find out if these predictions are right. I am going to read through a little bit of our green sea turtle article and then we will summarize it! [Read aloud.] Now that we’ve finished reading, let’s practice summarizing. I am going to highlight things that are important and cross out things that aren’t.”

5. [Demonstration on the smart board] Say: “We can highlight the first sentence, “Green sea turtles are the world’s largest species of hard-shelled sea turtle,” since that sounds important. I didn’t know they were the largest sea turtles in the world! We can cross out “While most individuals weigh about 300 to 400 pounds, some can be as heavy as 440 pounds,” in the second sentence since this just gives us more information about their large size. We can also highlight “These turtles are found nesting along the coastline of more than 80 countries,” in the second paragraph because this gives us information on where they live. We can cross out the rest of that sentence because the information just becomes repetitive. Let’s highlight the first sentence in the third paragraph, “Green sea turtles spend most of their lives underwater, where they can rest for up to five hours at a time before coming up for air.” This sentence tells us even more about how green sea turtles spend their time.”

6. [Ask students about what they think the main idea is] “That’s right! This article tells us all about where green sea turtles live and how they survive. Usually the main idea is relevant to the title of the article or is mentioned a lot throughout the article. [Ask students what they think the main point is] Awesome job! The main point is that green sea turtles live on land and water, eat plants, and have to be very careful because they face lots of dangers in their lives!”

7. Say: “On the first page of your study card, summarize this main idea. The main idea is green sea turtles live on land and water. A supporting detail would be green sea turtles spend most of their lives underwater.”

8. Say: “Now, let’s continue to pick out the important pieces of information from the remainder of this green sea turtle article. I want you to go through and read each paragraph yourself. Summarize it the best you can, highlighting the important parts and crossing out anything you think isn’t important to the main idea.”

9. [Walk around the classroom] Say: “Everyone’s study cards are looking great! Once you’ve read the entire article and have written down the main ideas along with supporting details, I want you to write a very brief summary of the article. At the bottom of the article, I would like for you to write any vocabulary words that are new and unfamiliar to you that you learned from the article. Then, write a sentence for each new word you learned. For example, let’s take a look at the word, migrate. Migrate- to move from one region or habitat to another. So, if I were trying to write a sentence with that word I would say, “Green sea turtles migrate from place to place each year.” “Now you try to complete the sentence using what you know about the word “migrate.”

Some possible vocabulary words: populations, propel, flippers, plankton

Assessment:

To conclude the lesson, Students will be assessed on how well they completed his or her summaries. I will use this scoring rubric to grade the summaries for correct, adequate information:

In his or her summary, did the student…

-Remove trivial information? YES/NO

-Write a topic sentence? YES/NO

-Write 3-5 good sentences? YES/NO

-Select key information from the article? YES/NO

-Choose the correct main topic for this article? YES/NO

-List any new vocabulary words/definitions at the end? YES/NO

I will also ask the students a series of comprehension questions to see if they read and understood the article:

-What do green sea turtles eat? (plants)

-Where do green sea turtles spend most of their time? (underwater)

-Do green sea turtles live on land or in the sea? (both)

-Where does the female green sea turtle bury her eggs? (in the sand/on the beach)

-Who or what is the biggest threat to green sea turtles? (humans)

-How long can a sea turtle hold their breath underwater? (up to 5 hours)

References:

Green Sea Turtle Article, National Geographic: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/green-sea-turtle/#green-sea-turtle-closeup-underwater.jpg

Meredith Gray, “Sliding into Summarizing”: https://sites.google.com/site/readingwithmsmeredithgray/home/reading-to-learn

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