Sum It Up Into Nuts | bergamini-lessons

Sum It Up Into Nuts!

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: Why Do Squirrels Have Bushy Tails? From Discovery Kids (class set and one for teacher)
Blank Bookmark shapes like a Peanut
Markers (One pack per group)
Poster with summarizing Rules:

When summarizing, did the student…

Underline important information

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 appendage and aggressive. Let’s first look at what the word appendage means. Appendage means something that is added to or attached to an object larger or more important. When we are looking at the human body, our arms and legs are our appendages. If we are looking at a tree, which would be considered an appendage; a tree trunk or a leaf? Exactly, a leaf would be the tree’s appendage! Now can you finish the sentence: An example of a cheetah’s appendage would be . . . (possible answers: leg, tail, ear, etc. The next vocabulary word we are going to learn is aggressive. Aggressive means ready or about to attack. For example, if I was bothering a lion in its habitat, the lion will probably be aggressive towards me. The word aggressive is not used correctly if someone was talking about a dog greeting their owner, as they entered the door. Which would be an example of aggressive: A mad dog about to bite or a kitten wanting to play? That’s right, a dog about to bite! Now can you finish the sentence: That animal seems to be aggressive! I think it is about to . . . (possible answers: nip, jump, growl, bite, cause me to have an injury, etc.)

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 a peanut shaped 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 “Why Do Squirrels Have Bushy Tails?” and display a copy on the board. Give a book talk for “Why Do Squirrels Have Bushy Tails?” Book talk: Many people might think that a squirrel’s tail is big and fluffy just for decoration. However, what you did not know is that a squirrels tail serves a lot of purposes. The tail is important for squirrels because it balances them, tells what type of squirrel it is and shows how the squirrel is feeling. A squirrel’s tail helps other squirrels to communicate with one another because the tail shows what type of squirrel they are. A squirrel can also use their tail by flaring it around to communicate with others that it might attack. You all will have to read the rest of the article to find out why a squirrels tail is important.

Now we are going to practice summarizing as a class. Let’s look at the first part of the article: “When we see squirrels, we often notice their big, bushy tails first. And that's no surprise--this body part can be nearly as big as the critter it's attached to. But the tail is certainly not just there for decoration. Like a tightrope walker holding onto a long pole for balance, the squirrel uses its tail to keep itself steady as it leaps across treetops or does a high-wire act on telephone lines.”

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: “When we see squirrels, we often notice their big, bushy tails first.” Do you think anything in this sentence is important? (Discuss) Yes, squirrels and big, bushy tails are especially important because that is the title of the article. (Make an X through the remaining words in the sentence) Let’s keep reading: “And that's no surprise--this body part can be nearly as big as the critter it's attached to.” Is anything in this sentence important? (Discuss) Hmm… I do not think anything is necessary to make a good summary here. So I am going to draw an X through the whole sentence. Let’s read the next two sentences: “But the tail is certainly not just there for decoration. Like a tightrope walker holding onto a long pole for balance, the squirrel uses its tail to keep itself steady as it leaps across treetops or does a high-wire act on telephone lines.” What do you see important here? (Discuss) Yes, mentioning that the squirrel’s tail is not decoration is important. But I see something that is more important than that; can anyone tell me what it is? Yes, where it says, “keep itself steady” 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 squirrels, big bushy tails and keeps itself steady. Now I need to make this into a sentence that makes sense. My topic sentence is: “Squirrels have big, bushy tails to keep themselves steady." 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 for 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 is a squirrel’s tail useful in the winter?

2. Why is a squirrel’s tail useful in the summer?

3. How does a squirrel stay cool?

References:

Reading to Learn, Lauren Carter, Flying Through Summarization.

https://sites.google.com/site/ctrdlaurencarter/reading-to-learn

Deason, Morgan Grace. Soaring Into Summarization!

‪ http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/awakenings/deasonmrl.htm

Why do Squirrel’s Have Bushy Tails? Discovery Kids.

http://kids.discovery.com/tell-me/animals/mammals/why-do-squirrels-have-bushy-tails

Assessment Checklist