Rationale: After learning how to read fluently, students will start reading to learn. Big components of reading to learn is being able to summarize and comprehend important information from the whole text. To grasp this concept, students will use the lesson to pick out key concepts and learn to summarize passages. First, students can begin to understand reading comprehension by asking themselves “what is the text about?” and then proceed to pick out the main point of the text. Because the author usually makes several points throughout a text, the reader must “superordinate” the points and find an umbrella term that covers all the main points the author is making. This lesson will guide students through the breakdown of an article in order to help students better understand summarization.
Materials: Pencil for each student, paper, “National Cupcake Day & Making Cookies” article for each student (linked below), summarization checklist, white board, and a highlighter.
Procedures:
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Say: “Today in class we are going to learn why summarizing is important. Summarizing is finding the main ideas of something you read. Sometimes we read long texts and we need to be able to pick out the important parts to understand what you are reading. If you watched a movie or read a book could you tell me everything that happened? No, that's right but you could tell me some of the key points - that's a summary! In order to find the most important information, we need to take out unnecessary information from the text. Now, let's practice finding the main idea and removing unimportant information.
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Say: “Let's break down summarizing into three key steps. [Write cancelled, important, and main ideas on a white board or smart board so all the students can see] These are important steps to achieving a good understanding of the text.
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Say: “Starting off there is cancelled. This is when we go through a cross out any part of the text that is not needed. Like when you have sprinkles on a cupcake, you don't have to have the sprinkles, but it can make the cupcake better. Just like we don't need the cancelled information but sometimes it makes the story better. So first we will cross out all the text that is not helpful to the plot. “ [Cross out the word cancelled on the board]
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Say: “Next we will look for important details: this is parts of the text that make the story. Like when you are eating a cupcake, the frosting is what makes a cupcake better. So we need to search the text for the parts that make the story better. Once you find these parts of the story, you can take your highlighter and highlight them.
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Say: “Last we are going to identify the main idea. This is what the entire story/passage is based on. Find an umbrella term for the events that happen in the text. Once the unnecessary information is marked out and the important details are identified it should be easy to summarize the main idea. Just like with our cupcake, the cake part of the cupcake is needed to have a cupcake. It is the base of the cupcake like the main idea is what the story/text is based on. So we can look at our highlighted text to create a summary sentence that wraps up all the information read.”
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Book Talk: Say: “Speaking of cupcakes, who here likes dessert? cake & cookies? What about donuts or pie? Put your hand on your head for cookies and your finger on your nose for cake. (lets students do these actions)Now I am going to pass out an article for you to read: it's about National Cupcake Day. Before we read, I am going to point out some important vocabulary words. The first is dessert. What is your favorite dessert? Dessert is a sweet treat like donuts, cupcakes, cake, pie, and cookies. For example, “Miss Elliott’s favorite dessert is peanut butter pie.” Now finish the sentence: My favorite dessert is... [Passes out article to students]
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[Read the article out loud as the students follow along on their own copy.]
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Say, “Now, I’m going to show you how I would summarize this article. To start, let us pick out what is not important to the summary. The sentence The sentence ‘...cupcakes used to be baked in teacups” is not really important.
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Say: “Now to pick out the most important details. The one thing I noticed was that National Cupcake Day is December 15th and chocolate is the most popular flavor of cupcake. So, I am going to make my topic sentence. “National Cupcake day is December 15th and chocolate is the most popular flavor.” [Write the sentence down on the board.]
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Say: “Now that we have our main idea, we need to work out what the author is trying to say about this topic.” [Write down key topics on the board to show them like cupcakes can have frosting, fruit, or pastry cream, etc. Continue going through steps, thinking aloud so the students understand the process of deciding what is and is not important to the summary.]
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Say: “Now I am going to pass out an article on making cookies so that you all can practice using the three steps of summarizing. Read the article to yourself and do our three steps to make a summary. [They will read the article and write their own summaries to turn in at the end.]
Assessment: Ask them comprehension questions after they have turned in the summaries. Go over their independent summaries of the article using the chart. All or mostly yes’s means that the student has a strong understanding of summarization. Work on any areas that were given a no.
What kind of cookies are Greg’s favorite?
What does he do when the chocolate chips are in the batter?
Where does he place the balls of batter?
What does he do with the bowl?
What have you learned about making cookies that you can use at home?
What is an important ingredient for chocolate chip cookies?
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Resources:
“Dessert Time!” Article: https://www.phillytrib.com/the_learning_key/did-you-know-national-cupcake-day-dec-15/article_4cd447a2-45e5-5f72-be7c-649a1db20bbd.html
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“Making Cookies” Article: https://www.k5learning.com/sites/all/files/reading-comprehension-worksheet-grade-1-making-cookies.pdf
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Barkley, Madison “Eating Through Summarization”: https://madisonvbarkley.wixsite.com/lessons/reading-to-learn
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