Swimming into Summarization! By Macy Gann
Reading to Learn
Rationale: The goal for students is to learn by comprehending what they have read. Once they begin reading correctly and fluently, they can move onto the next level. Comprehensive reading is how the student will be able to understand what the text says, and what it means. The most important part of reading is learning to summarize. This lesson is designed to teach reading comprehension by showing students how to summarize and determine important events in a text. Because the author typically makes several points, readers must learn to “superordinate” the points. Readers must find an umbrella term that covers all the main points the author is making. Comprehension will be demonstrated by students answering questions about the article, once it has been read. The main point of the reading will become the the topic sentence.``
Materials:
Individual copies of bottlenose dolphin articles from National Geographic Kids
Pencils
Papers
Highlighters
Summarization checklist (see below)
Comprehension quiz (see below)
Vocabulary words: echolocation, mammals,
Procedures:
Teacher says: “Raise your hand if you have ever read a book that you thought was so interesting, you just couldn’t wait to tell someone about it! When you told them about it, did you only tell them the important parts of the book? If so, this is called summarization!
Teacher says: “Now that we have become fluent readers, we are going to learn a new skill to help with reading comprehension. This new strategy is called “summarization”. The best way to summarize is called about-point. In about-point, you ask yourself a simple question: “What is the text about?” and a tougher question: “What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?” To answer the tough question, you have to think of an umbrella term for all the important points the writer is telling you. Once you have the answers to these questions, you can use those answers to write a topic sentence.”
Teacher says: “Now that we have our key strategies for helping us summarize, we can start to look at an article to help practice summarizing. I’m going to demonstrate how I would do about-point with an article about bottlenose dolphins that we are reading today.” (Booktalk): “Have you ever seen a bottle-nosed dolphin at the beach? How long do you think they live? These are some questions you will be learning to answer today!”
Teacher says: “In order to summarize and understand what we are reading, it is important to make sure we know what all the words in the passage mean. We are going to go over a few words together that you will see in the article that we are going to read today. For each word please make sure you write the word, its definition, and the sentence used.” For each word, explain the word in simple language, model how to use the word. For example: what doesn’t it mean?
Provide sample questions using the word, and scaffold by making a sentence using the word for students to complete.
Teacher says: “Let’s look at the first vocabulary word, echolocation. Echolocation is what tells the dolphins the shape, size, speed, distance, and location of the object. The word is used in the passage, “Dolphins also produce high frequency clicks, which act as a sonar system called echolocation.” Now that we know what echolocation means, use "echolocation" in a sentence.”
Another vocabulary word we are going to look at is, mammal. Mammals are any living thing that have lungs for breathing air, a backbone, and the female of the species giving birth to live young and feeding their young with milk. This makes us humans mammals! I want you to write a sentence with the word mammal in it.
Say: “As I pass out the articles we are going to summarize today, let’s take another look at our summarization rules that are on the board and make sure they are copied down correctly.” Once everything is passed out and the students have everything copied down, begin the lesson.
Say: “Who can tell me, based on the rules, what they think we should do first if we want to summarize this article? Right! Highlight the most important information. Let’s take a look at the first paragraph and see if we can start the process of summarization. We first highlight all important sentences. Once we highlight the important sentences, we can go back and mark the ones that were not as important.” (Explain why you highlighted and marked out certain sentences when modeling the paragraph below).
Thought to be some of the smartest animals on Earth, bottlenose dolphins send messages to one another in many different ways. They squeak, squawk and use body language—leaping as high as 20 feet in the air, snapping their jaws, slapping their tails on the surface of the water, blowing bubbles and even butting heads. Each dolphin has a special whistle that it creates soon after it is born. This whistle is used for identification, just like a human’s name. Dolphins also produce high frequency clicks, which act as a sonar system called echolocation (ek-oh-low-KAY-shun). When the clicking sounds hit an object in the water, like a fish or rock, they bounce off and come back to the dolphin as echoes. Echolocation tells the dolphins the shape, size, speed, distance, and location of the object.
Teacher says: “Now all of your articles should look like mine. Now that we have everything highlighted and crossed out, we are going to form a topic sentence based off of our highlighted information.” (Write the topic sentence on board for students to refer back to) “Dolphins send messages to one another through whistles, which is also a way they identify themselves.”
Teacher says: “We are going to continue this process for each paragraph of this article. Now that we have practiced this together I want you to continue to work individually on this task. I want you to pick out some important facts and highlight them and cross out anything that is not as important. Once you are done and have found the most important facts in each paragraph, you can start to put all the sentences together to make your own one, big paragraph. This paragraph is your summary!”
As students finish, have them turn in their article and summary for a grade. Tell them to pick up a comprehension question exit slip that they will fill out as well. The exit slip will consist of the following questions: 1. Are bottlenose dolphins more likely to eat a land animal or sea animal? Why? [Sea animals; They feed on fish, squid, and shrimp]. 2. How do bottlenose dolphins make their friends? [They are very social and playful; Through hunting, mating, and protecting each other]. 3. What does echolocation help dolphins do? [It helps dolphins learn the shape, size, speed, distance, and location of the object near them]. 4. Why is it important that we don’t throw trash in the ocean while playing at the beach? [Dolphins easily get trapped in garbage humans leave on the beach].
Have students turn in their annotated article and a summary and grade as a form of assessment.
Summary rubric:
_____ Student underlined/highlighted important ideas
_____ Student crossed out unimportant detail
_____ Summary used 1+ complete sentences in their summary
_____ Student identified topics accurately in summary
_____ Student included key ideas in summary
Comprehension Questions:
Are bottlenose dolphins more likely to eat a land animal or sea animal? Why? [Sea animals; They feed on fish, squid, and shrimp].
How do bottlenose dolphins make their friends? [They are very social and playful; Through hunting, mating, and protecting each other].
What does echolocation help dolphins do? [It helps dolphins learn the shape, size, speed, distance, and location of the object near them].
Why is it important that we don’t throw trash in the ocean while playing at the beach? [Dolphins easily get trapped in garbage humans leave on the beach].
What makes a bottlenose dolphin an animal? [Take any answer that includes: having lungs for breathing air, having a backbone, and the female of the species giving birth to live young and feeding their young with milk.]
Resources:
National Geographic Kids: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/bottlenose-dolphin#world-oceans-day-dolphins.jpg
Emma Mayers, Soaring into Learning from Reading: https://epa0004.wixsite.com/emmaayers/reading-to-learn
Return to: Awakening Index