Reading to Learn | mirandasnider

Summarization with Polar Bears!

A Reading to Learn Lesson

Rationale: After students have gained reading fluency, it is time to start teaching them how comprehend text. Summarization is the key! Summarization is a strategy to help readers focus on the most important parts of the text. With focusing on the most important parts of the text, students are able to focus and comprehend the important messages of the text. In this lesson students will use the three steps of summarization. Students will mark out trivial and repeated information, locate and highlight relevant information, and compose a topic sentence about the relevant information.

Materials:

Pencils (for each student and teacher)
Highlighters (for each student and teacher)
Copies of National Geographic’s article, “Polar Bear” (for each student and for the teacher)

URL for article: http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/polar-bear/#polar-bear-cub-on-mom.jpg

Smartboard or projector
Summarization Rule Sheet (for each student) (Attached)
Comprehension Question Sheet (for each student) (Attached)
Summarization Checklist (for teacher) (Attached)

Procedures:

Explain to students why summarization is an important strategy. Say: “Today we are going to learn about summarization. Skillful readers use the strategy of summarization to understand text. Summarization is important because it helps us to look at only the important messages of the text. With focusing on the important messages of the text or reading, we can read to learn! We can better understand the text! Now let’s get to summarizing!”
Explain the rules of summarizing. Say: “Let’s discuss the rules of summarizing! I am going to give each of you a summarization rule sheet. On this rule sheet it lists the three rules of summarization. [Hold up the rule sheet and read off of it]. First, to summarize, we are going to mark out trivial and repeated information. Second, we are going to locate and highlight the relevant or in other words, the important information. Third, we are going to compose a topic sentence about the important/relevant information. When you are reading be sure to look at the rules and apply them to the text.”
Background Knowledge/ Explaining new vocabulary: Say: “Before we read our article, we must go over some background knowledge—this includes vocabulary. Here are some words we need to go over: primarily, emerges, agreement.

Primarily means mostly. An example sentence would be “Miss Miranda primarily eats fruit.”Emerges means to come forth. An example sentence would be “A ghost emerges from the dark forest.” Agreement means the act of coming to a mutual arrangement. An example sentence would be “Miss Miranda and Miss Jenna came to agreement about the music performance.”

Begin to model to the students. Say: “Today, we are going to be reading about polar bears!! Polar bears are awesome creatures! Does anyone know where they live? What they eat? In this reading we can learn where they live, what they eat, and about their young!! We are going to become polar bear experts today! While we read about polar bears, we are going to be practice summarizing. Let me show you how to summarize using this text. [Project the article from a smartboard or project and model the steps of summarization.] We are going to summarize the first three sentences together, and then you will do the rest on your own.

Read from the article the first three sentences:

Polar bears live along shores and on sea ice in the icy cold Arctic. When sea ice forms over the ocean in cold weather, many polar bears, except pregnant females, head out onto the ice to hunt seals. Polar bears primarily eat seals.”

Continue the modeling. Say: “Okay so according to the rule sheet, first I need to mark out unimportant or trivial and repeated information. ‘Polar bears live along shores and on sea ice in the icy cold Artic.’ What’s not important in this sentence? [Wait for students to answer.] Well, I do not think I need to know about the shores and sea ice, and the words icy and cold are similar. So I only need one of those words. So I can mark out all those things. [Mark out the items with a pencil]. Onto the next sentence! ‘When sea ice forms over the ocean in cold weather, many polar bears, except pregnant females, head out onto the ice to hunt seals.’ In this sentence I don’t need to know ice forms over the ocean in cold weather, and I do not need to know that they head out onto the ice. In the other sentence, it mentions the Artic is “icy” and “cold”, so this is repeated information I can cross out. Let’s look at the next sentence. ‘Polar bears primarily eat seals.’ Well since the previous sentence mentioned that polar bears hunt seals, do we need to know they eat seals? No, because that’s repeated information.
Continue to model. Say: “So now that we have marked out all the trivial and repeated information, let’s move onto the next rule. The second rule is to locate and highlight the important information. So what’s left in our sentences? Let’s highlight the important information.

Polar bears live along shores and on sea ice in the icy cold Arctic. When sea ice forms over the ocean in cold weather, many polar bears, except pregnant females, head out onto the ice to hunt seals. Polar bears primarily eat seals.”

Complete model. Say: “Now that we have done rules one and two, it’s time for three. What is rule three? Compose a topic sentence from the important information. Based on the information we highlighted, our topic sentence could be ‘Polar bears live in the cold Artic and many polar bears, except for pregnant females, hunt seals.’ Does everyone see how this topic sentence uses all the highlighted information?
Explain the activity. Say: “Now it’s your turn! You are going to finish the article about polar bears and use your summarization rule sheet to help you. Now there are two paragraphs in the article. I know I did the first three sentences of one paragraph, but I want you to finish the remainder of the paragraph and come up with a topic sentence for it. Remember to mark out all the trivial and repeated information with a pencil, highlight the important information with the highlighter I gave you, and create a topic sentence for each paragraph. Please write your topic sentences on the Summarization worksheet I am handing out. When you are finished summarizing, please come up and grab a comprehension worksheet. On the comprehension worksheet is a series of questions about the polar bears. Please answer the questions as best you can. I will be taking this up for a grade.”
Assessment. Collect all the students’ summarization sentences of the article [This is the summarization worksheet]. While the students are working on the comprehension worksheet, the teacher evaluates each student using the summarization checklist.

References:

Bruce Murray, Using About-Point to Awaken the Main Idea.

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/AboutPointRL.html

National Geographic Kids:

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/polar-bear/#polar-bear-cub-on-mom.jpg

Polar Bear GIF: http://giphy.com/gifs/g1ft3d-dancing-bear-g1ft3d-SnBaZPL1Tjnfa

Audrey Blair, Growing Tall with Summarization

http://abb0036.wixsite.com/funwithreading/reading-to-learn

Click here to return to Index

“Polar Bear”

(Topic Sentences)

Topic Sentence #1