Reading to Learn | lemlessons

Rationale:

Once your students have learned to read fluently and accurately, they must move on to the next level, which is the lifelong skill of reading and comprehending the information in the text. It is important for students to learn how to summarize what they are reading, showing that they are truly comprehending what they read. This lesson will focus on reading comprehension and summarizing. When a student learns how to summarize, they show that they understand how to remove trivial and necessary information from the text. We will learn how to comprehend texts by using specific steps that have been effective in the classroom.

Materials:

Pencil (1 per child)
Paper (1 per child)
Highlighter (1 per child)
White board
Dry erase marker
Sheet of blank paper for summarizing rules
Sheet of lined paper for summarizing articles
Copies of the article, "Parrots That Eat Dirt" (one per student, one for teacher) by Jack Myers
“Ten Freaky Forces of Nature” (one for each student)
Rubric for grading summaries
Overhead camera
SmartBoard

Procedures:

1. Let’s start off the lesson by teaching our students what it means to summarize. Say: “Alright students, today we are going to learn how to summarize an article. When we summarize, we are able to understand what we just read. This is when you look at the entire passage you have read and then shrink it down to specific information or key events that have the most meaning in the passage. We will practice summarizing with two different articles. We are going to focus on figuring out what the main idea is, what facts support the main idea, and what information can be removed.

2. Say: Okay, now we need to learn the rules on how to summarize. Did everyone come up and receive a piece of paper to fill in the rules as we learn them? wait for responses. Good. I am going to write each rule on the white board and I want you to copy each rule onto your own paper as I write them on the board. When we finish writing down all of our helpful summarizing tips, you can leave this piece of paper on your desk and use it to help you as you read your articles to help you summarize as you read.

3. Say: Here are our 3 Summarization Tips

Tip #1: Pick out the most important details by underlining or highlighting them.
Tip #2: Find the repeated details that are unimportant and cross them out.
Tip #3: Organize the information you found in tip #1 by writing sentences about them.

4. Say: Our main idea of the story is supported by the details. Now, I want you to write these steps on the paper I gave to each of you. [Ask your students to recall the tips to you as they write the tips down on their paper.] Then, the students will write down some key points to remember about summarizing on the bottom of their paper. For example, summaries will always be shorter in length than the passage you are summarizing.

5. Say: Okay class, can anyone tell me what birds eat? [wait for students to respond] Right! Birds eat seeds or bugs, but did anyone know that some parents eat dirt? Today, we are going to read an article called “Parrots That Eat Dirt”. We will read it together to figure out why parrots like to eat dirt! While we read, I want you to follow along on your copy. We are going to highlight what we think is an important main idea, cross out any information that we think may be unimportant to the main idea, and organize our information we found important to write a topic sentence. [Use Smart Board to read through article with class while highlighting important information and crossing out unimportant information]

6. After reading the article, review vocabulary. “Did anyone notice a long word in that last paragraph that was hard to understand? Did anyone else see the word endangering? To endanger means to threaten or to put something at risk. [Write word and definition on the board]. Can someone read me the first sentence of the last paragraph in the article? [call on a student to read]. Here, the author is telling us that some people put parrots in danger. If it were not for these people endangering the parrots’ life, then they would still be alive today. Let’s use endangered in another sentence. Ashley felt endangered by her neighbor’s dog when it started barking at her from behind the fence. Can someone give me a sentence using the word endangered in the right way? [wait for student response]. That’s great! Alright, now that we have discussed this article, we are all going to write 3 sentences summarizing this article as a class. Call on your students to help them write sentences, and write their suggested sentences on the SmartBoard.

7. Now, pass out “Ten Freaky Forces of Nature” to the class. This article is all about the mystery and majesty of different forces of nature. It is crazy to think about, but volcanoes explode from hot matter from inside the earth’s core, and storms that rip up building can wipe out cities. Let’s read and discover more about these crazy forces of nature. As we read the article, remember to highlight the important information and cross out any unimportant information. After each paragraph, write a sentence to summarize that paragraph and ask yourself: What’s the big idea? What’s the point? [When your students finish reading, stop them]. Alright, let’s practice summarizing the second paragraph. [uses overhead camera to display passage].

The fastest wind speed ever recorded—318 miles an hour (511 kilometers an hour)—occurred during a tornado near Oklahoma City in 1999. Scientists classify tornadoes by the damage they can do. A tornado with wind speeds of 70 miles an hour (113 kilometers an hour) can sweep away entire houses and hurl cars through the air like missiles. But a tornado with wind speeds of more than 300 miles an hour (483 kilometers an hour) has the power to derail trains and cars, tear grass from the ground, and even rip pavement from the street.
Follow along with me as I follow the rules of summarization as applied to this passage. The first sentence says: ‘The fastest wind speed ever recorded – 318 miles an hour (511 kilometers an hour)—occurred during a tornado near Oklahoma City in 1999.’ Ask yourself, is it important to know that? Yes, but let’s go on to read the rest of the paragraph to understand the MOST important parts of what is being said. Ok, moving on. “Scientists classify tornadoes by the damage they can do”. That whole sentence seems to be important to the text, so we will highlight it.

8. Now that I have shown you what an example of important information, I want y’all to look at the rest of the article and highlight and cross out the information that you think is most important. I will be walking around to see how you are doing. Try your best to find the key details and eliminate the unimportant details and to find the main idea.

9. It looks like everyone’s papers are great so far! After you have read and found the main ideas, highlighted important details, and crossed out unimportant details, I would like you to write down a paragraph to briefly summarize the article. After that, look through the article and find 5 words that you have never read before. Try and guess what you think each word means and write down your definition. Do you have any questions? I will be here to help. Keep in mind you are learning the lifelong skill of READING TO LEARN! You are doing a great job so far! Keep it up!

Assessment:

Students will be assessed at the end on how well they did on their summaries. I will use this scoring rubric to grade their summaries for the correct information:

Did the student in he/she’s summary… YES NO

Remove unimportant information?

Organize items and events together?

Find the main idea?

Highlight important information?

Write a topic sentence that goes along with the main idea?

List 5 new vocabulary words with definitions at the end?

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