Summarizing with Aubie

Reading to Learn

Rationale: Once children have learned to read accurately and fluently, they must move on to the next step in reading. The ultimate goal of reading comprehension, and the next step in reading is reading to learn. This lesson focuses on summarizing, a strategy to help students begin to read to learn. This lesson will help students learn to summarize by teaching them to delete trivial and redundant information and focus on the important parts of a text.

Materials:

Article: Introduction to the Tiger—From Discovery Kids (class set and one for teacher)

Blank Bookmark with Aubie on it

Markers (one pack per group)

Poster with Summarizing Rules:

When summarizing, did the student...

1) Delete trivia and redundancies

2) Superordinate items and events

3) Find or compose a statement that covers everything the writer is saying about the topic

Pencil and Paper (for each student)

Reading Comprehension Questions

Assessment Chart

Procedure:

1. Say: Today we are going to talk about a strategy to help us comprehend what we are reading. Who remembers what it means to comprehend? (Call on student.) That’s right! It does mean to understand the message of what you are reading. I hope that by the end of this lesson you will all be able to summarize texts very easily. Summarizing a text means to pick out the most important information of a text and then make it into a short paragraph or essay. It is so important that you learn how to summarize because we use summaries every day! An example of how we use summaries is when I want to share a book I read with you all. I would have to think of the most important events that occurred, in order to share a good summary of what happened in the book!

2. Say: Before we learn more about how to summarize, let’s review some vocabulary before we read the article. The two new words that we will learn, in this article, are vulnerable and endangered. Let’s first look at what the word vulnerable means. Vulnerable means something that is capable of being wounded or hurt. If you go out in the sun for a long time without sunscreen then you are vulnerable of getting sunburnt. The tiger’s prey is vulnerable when sitting out in the open for the tiger to eat. Now can you finish the sentence: When I don’t have my seatbelt on I am: (answer: vulnerable). The next vocabulary word we are going to learn is endangered. Endangered means threatened with extinction. For example, pandas are an endangered species because there is only a small number of their population left in the entire world. The word endangered is not used correctly if someone said that dogs were endangered because there is a large amount of dogs in the world.

Which would be an example of endangered: A tiger whose population is very low compared to other animals or the number of cats in a neighborhood? That’s right, a tiger! Now can you finish the sentence: That animal seems to be endangered! I think it is about to become . . . (answer: extinct.)

3. Say: Now that we have reviewed our vocabulary, let’s go back to talking about summarizing. (Show the class the summarizing rules poster.) You all have an Aubie bookmark and markers on your desks. I want you to write down each rule as we talk about them and then at the end of the lesson I will give you all a few minutes to color your bookmark. This will help us all remember the rules of summarization. The first rule of summarizing is: find important information. Go ahead and write that down. (Allow writing time.) This means that that when you see something that you think is important to know you should underline it or maybe write down a key word or phrase. The second rule of summarizing is: remove unimportant or repeated information. Go ahead and write that down. (Allow writing time.) This means that if you see something that is not crucial for the meaning of the text or it is repeated information, you may draw an “X” through it (However, do not write it in a textbook.) The third rule of summarizing is: write a topic sentence. Write that on your bookmark. (Allow writing time.) It means that once you've picked out the parts of the text that are important (what the paragraph is about and what the point is), you combine them to create a topic sentence. This topic sentence captures all the important parts of a paragraph within a text.

4. Pass out copies of “Introduction to the Tiger” and display a copy on the board. Give a book talk for “Introduction to the Tiger” Book talk: The tiger is the largest species of the entire cat family. They grow up to be more than 600 pounds! That is like 300 times the weight of house cats! They are also carnivores, which means they eat meat from other animals. Tigers hunt and stalk their prey in order to catch it for their meals. Unfortunately, many people hunt and kill tigers wiping out a large part of their population. To find out how many tigers are living today and more interesting facts, we’ll have to read on!

Say: Now we are going to practice summarizing as a class. Let’s look at the first part of the article: “Allow me to introduce Myself: I’m a Tiger

Where You’ll Most Likely Find Me:   Asia and Russia and in zoos and man-made conservation areas large enough for us to roam.

What I Like to Eat: We are carnivores who have a taste for deer, wild pigs, sloth, dogs, leopards, pythons, monkeys, and water buffalo. There have been reports of attacks on human by old and injured tigers. This is why we are perceived as one of the scariest mammals on land.”

Say: I want everyone to be following along with me and paying attention to how I follow these rules. Let’s look at the first sentence: “You’ll most likely find them in Asia and Russia and in zoos and man-made conservation areas large enough for us to roam” Do you think anything in this sentence is important? (Discuss) Yes, Asia and Russia because it tells us where we’re most likely to find tigers. (Make an X through the remaining words in the sentence) Let’s keep reading: “We are carnivores who have a taste for deer, wild pigs, sloth dogs, leopards, pythons, monkeys, and water buffalo.” Is anything in this sentence important? (Discuss) Yes, but I don’t think it is necessary to name all of the animals that it eats, so choose three and cross the rest out with an X. Let’s read the next two sentences: “There have been reports of attacks on human by old and injured tigers. This is why we are perceived as one of the scariest mammals on land.” What do you see important here? (Discuss) Yes mentioning that there have been reports of attacks on human is important. But I see something that is more important than that; can anyone tell me what it is? Yes, where it says, “perceived as one of the scariest mammals on land” is important, so I am going to underline that.

So now that we have applied rules 1 and 2 of summarizing to this paragraph, I am going to demonstrate how to use rule 3 and create a topic sentence using the parts I underlined. I’ve got Asia and Russia, carnivores, and attacks on human. Now I need to make this into a sentence that makes sense. My topic sentence is: “Tigers are found in Asia and Russia where they are perceived as one of the scariest land mammals because their carnivores." Does everyone understand what I just did? Does anyone have any questions?

5. Say: Now I am going to let you all practice summarizing with the rest of this article. I want you to go through each 5 or so sentences and break it down like we just did. Be sure to follow the rules for summary and then change the order around in your topic sentence. I want you to write at least four topic sentences for this article. When you are finished, staple your article to your paper with the topic sentences and turn it in. Then you may continue decorating your bookmark.

Assessment: I will review each student’s topic sentence, as well as, the entire article as the marking on each of their articles. I will use the assessment checklist for each student listened above to know whether each student followed the rules and understood how to summarize accordingly. Also, I will ask three-comprehension question for a Reading Comprehension check at the end:

1) Why are tigers perceived as one of the scariest mammals on land?

2) How do tigers hunt their prey?

3) Why are tigers an endangered species?

References:

1) Reading to Learn, Karlie Bergamini, “Sum it Up into Nuts”.

http://karliembergamini.wix.com/bergamini-lessons#!sum-it-up-into-nuts/cz2c

2) Introduction to the Tiger. Discovery Kids.

3) http://discoverykids.com/articles/tiger/

Assessment Checklist:

When Summarizing, did the student…

Underline important information?

Yes or No