Taylor Hoff's Lesson Designs
Swimming into Summarization with
Sea Turtles
Reading is Learning Design
Rationale:
To comprehend a text successfully, we can use the strategy of summarization to help with reading comprehension. For our students to develop into skilled readers, students must be able to find key details and main ideas in a text. The heart of summarization is superordinate predicate terms. With the use of this lesson, students will learn how to find the key points and separate the main ideas in a story. This will then help them to summarize the text they have read, after they have observed the teacher modeling how to delete trivial, or unimportant information and pick out the important details and information.
Materials:
1. Summarization Rules displayed on a poster:
1. Leave out unimportant information.
2. Leave out repeated information.
3. Pick out important information.
4. Find an umbrella term.
5. Create a topic sentence.
2. Highlighter and Pen/Pencil for each student.
3. Cut out of a sea turtle for each student.
4. Copies of "Sea Turtles for Kids" Article for each student.
5. Copies of "Green Sea Turtle" Article for each student.
6. Summarization Checklist Rubric
7. Article at front of the classroom (on SmartBoard/Projector)
8. Comprehension Questions (on board)
Sea Turtles for Kids
1. Which ocean are sea turtles not found in?
2. Are turtles cold-blooded or warm-blooded?
3. What is the largest kind of sea turtle?
4. Why do sea turtles sometimes look like they are crying?
Green Sea Turtles
1. What do these turtles eat?
2. How big do these turtles grow to be?
3. Do Green Sea Turtles spend more time in water or land?
4. Where do these turtles lay their eggs?
Procedures:
1. Say: "Today, we are going to learn how to become expert readers by learning how to summarize! With the use of summarizing, we can better comprehend what we are reading. Can anyone tell me what it means to summarizewhen you read? (students respond). That is right! A reader will read the passage or part of the text and then, take the most important details and main ideas of the text to retell what the story was all about. Do we want to mention every detail we read? (students respond). No! We only want to mention the important details and leave out the more unimportant information! Summarizing our text can also help us to understand what we read, or comprehend what we read. Does anyone know what comprehend means? (students respond). When we comprehend what we have read, we can understand what we have read and understand the meaning behind the story.
2. Next, I will review the summarization checklist with my students (display on poster board for students to see).
· Leave out details that are unimportant or trivial because that information does not help us understand the text to
summarize.
· Leave out details that are repeated because that text has already been used or seen and will lead to confusion.
· Pick out important information from the text because those important details and main ideas will help us to summarize the text to comprehend the message of the text.
· Find an umbrella term for the events that happen in the text.
· Create a topic sentence that tells us what the text is about and mentions the main ideas presented in the text to introduce your summary.
3. Say: "Before we begin summarizing, we are going to review some of the vocabulary throughout the article so we understand what the words man before we begin trying to comprehend the text. Looking at the 'Green Sea Turtle' Article, the fifth paragraph's first sentence uses the new word, migrate. This sentence says, "Similar to other sea turtles, green sea turtles migratelong distances between their feeding grounds and their nesting sites, with recorded distances longer than 1,615 miles (2,600 kilometers)". This sentence tells me that migratehas something to do with long distances between a turtle's feeding ground and their nesting sites. Migrate means when an animal moves from one place to another to either breed or find food. Many animals migrate, but sea turtles migrate for the purpose of breeding new turtles and to find more food. It is important to know what the term migratemeans so we know about the characteristics of a green sea turtle. (Ask students) So, do some sea turtles not migrate? (students respond). No! All green sea turtles must migrate in order to find food and if it applies to them, breed new turtles.
4. Say: "Now, we are going to read the article about the Green Sea Turtles (Teacher puts article up on SmartBoard and passes out individual article for each student). We are going to read the article silently, and then we will discuss it all together" (Teacher and students read article silently). I will pass out the cut outs of sea turtles to each student. Say: "If you have finished reading, you can begin writing down our Rules of Summarization from the poster on your cut out to help you remember the steps on how to summarize. You can also use it to mark your place in your text. I will now review our rules of summarization before our discussion" (teacher reviews summarization rules).
5. Say: "I am now going to show you how you would summarize the third paragraph of the article by following our summarization steps. First, we are supposed to leave out the unimportant information. For example, we can take out part of the first sentence where it talks about turtles staying underwater because it addresses it again in the second sentence about the time they can spend underwater. Second, we are going to make sure we leave out repeated information in our summarization. There is proof we have done this successfully from our first step of taking out unimportant information. Third, we will pick out the important information to include in our summary. After looking at the sentences, we will pick out important information such as the turtles live underwater and can spend up to five hours underwater and they also come up to the surface to breathe after a few minutes of being underwater. My passage should look like this when I highlight the important information and cross out unimportant and repeated information". (Teacher shows highlighted passage on SmartBoard and allow students time to highlight their own copy).
6. Say: "Now, I want you to try and summarize the last three paragraphs of the Green Sea Turtle article. I will be walking around to assist you and feel free to work with a partner for help as well. Make sure you use your sea turtle bookmark and look at your summarization steps listed. Use the highlighter you have to mark important information and use your pencil or pencil to cross out the unimportant or repeated texts you have determined from the paragraphs. After looking at the important text we have highlighted, we will construct one topic sentence on what the assigned passage was all about. When you are finished working on your own individual summarization, share your topic sentence and the summarization process with your partner. When everyone has finished sharing with their partner, we will discuss this as a class". (students have completed task). Say: "What did you highlight as important? (students respond) What did you cross out as unimportant? (students respond) What was your topic sentence? (allow students time to share). Say: "Your marked paragraph should look similar to this" (show example of my paragraph).
7. Say: "To complete our lesson on summarization, I am handing out our final article titled: 'Sea Turtles for Kids'. This article gives more facts and experiences about sea turtles. I want you to read the entire article, use the steps of summarization on your sea turtle bookmark to guide your summarization steps (highlighting important information and crossing our unimportant information), and construct a paragraph of a few sentences on the entire article using the highlighted information with a topic sentence. Use the answers to the questions of: 'What is the article about? What is the purpose of this article? If I told someone about this article, what would I say?' Say: "Answer the comprehension questions on the board and then complete the finish the sentence exercise on the board: Sea turtles are considered __________, meaning they are cold-blooded, have scaly skin, breathe air, and lay eggs. Remember to use complete sentences and correct punctuation!"
8. For my assessment of my students, I will collect the articles the students marked, a paragraph with the topic sentence, and the answers to the comprehension questions. The summarization checklist rubric (table below) will be to assess the paragraph the students wrote on "Sea Turtles for Kids" using the following criteria: Deleting unimportant information, deleting repeated information, constructing a topic sentence. It is also important to include supporting details and construct a summary that includes the main ideas.
Summarization Checklist Rubric:
When summarizing, did the student…
Construct a simple topic sentence? Yes/no
Delete unimportant information? Yes/no
Delete repeated information? Yes/no
Include supporting details? Yes/no
Construct a summary that includes the main ideas? Yes/no
References:
Sea Turtles for Kids Article
https://www.ducksters.com/animals/sea_turtles.php
Green Sea Turtles Article
Kirkpatrick, Emma, Storming into Summarization
https://emk0029.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn