Reading to learn
How Whale Can You Summarize?
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RATIONALE
The ultimate goal of reading is comprehension. Once children have learned to read accurately and fluently, they can move on to this next step. This lesson is going to focus on teaching students how to achieve reading comprehension. One way to do that is by teaching summarization. Find an umbrella term for the events that happen in the text. 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. This way they can focus on the main points of the story which will give them the skills to answer and retell what a story or passage is about.
MATERIALS
- Class set (including one for teacher) of the article “Changing Tunes” by Constance Gibbs
-Example text “Harriet Tubman Freed Hundreds of Slaves on the Underground Railroad” by Kids Discover (class set and one for teacher)
- Poster with summarizing rules
1. Find important information
2.Delete unimportant or repeated information
3. Write a topic sentence
- Whale booklets (a flipbook in the shape of a whale)
- Overhead projector, Smart Board, or document camera with projector screen
- Pencil and paper
- Reading Comprehension Questions:
1. What are the two hypotheses that are mentioned in this article?
2. How does the changing environment affect the whales and sounds they make?
ASSESSMENT CHART: Did the student YES NO
Mark out unimportant information?
Mark out repeated information?
Highlight important information?
Write an organized topic sentence using only the important information?
PROCEDURE
1. Say Today we're going to talk about a strategy to help us comprehend what we're reading. Who remembers what it means to comprehend? (Call on a student.) Student answers “comprehend is being able to understand what you read.” “That’s right! It does mean to understand the message of what you're 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. Summarizes are something we use every day and important in becoming a better reader. When you read a good book and you want to tell them about it, you have to be careful about you summarize a book or a text. Today we are going to go over and ways to successfully summarize texts.
2. Say: But before we learn more about how to summarize, let's review what we've been talking about lately. Recently we have been talking about what main topic this week? Student: Oceans. Yes, that right. We have been talking about oceans and the animals that live in them. Let’s go over some vocabulary we have gone over this week. Who remembers what we call the animals who live in oceans? Student: marine life. Yes, and can anyone name some specific marine animals? Student: fish, whales, dolphins. Good! Can anyone tell me how most sea life breath underwater? Student: with gills. Yes, their gills help them change the moving water into oxygen, so they can breathe. Like our lungs give us the ability to breathe their gills give them the ability to breathe too.
3. Say: Now that we've reviewed our vocabulary, let's talk about summarizing. Bring out a large post-it and go through the rules the make a good summary. Starting with 1. Find important information. By using a highlighter when you first read through it and highlighting the parts you find important. Then moving to #2. Delete unimportant or repeated information. Explaining how they can mark out the unimportant details to help them better see the main points the text is making. Then moving on to #3 Write a topic sentence and an explanation. Then talk about how to they can then take the information they have highlighted and put it together to make a strong summary. Use these three rules to then go over the example text, “Harriet Tubman Freed Hundreds of Slaves on the Underground Railroad” with the students. Showing how the students can highlight the parts that will be useful in a summary and what to make out as not important. After we go over this example text the students can have some time to write these rules in their flip books to have on hand and to help with any homework or other class activities.
4. Say: “This will help us all remember the rules of summarization! The first rule of summarizing is to "find important information.". (Allow writing time). The second rule of summarizing is to "delete unimportant or repeated information” (Allow writing time). The third rule and last rule of summarizing are to "write a topic sentence” (Allow writing time).”
5. Pass out copies of "Changing Tunes," and display a copy on the board using an overhead projector, a Smart Board, or a document camera. Give a book talk for "Changing Tunes" by asking (before handing out the articles), “What can you guess this article is about just from the title “Changing Tunes” and from what we have been talking about in class? (after putting just, the whale picture up on the smartboard.) Anyone have any more thought now before we start reading? Student: It’s going to be about whales. Yes! Let’s read and find out more about what this article is about.
Say: Now we're going to practice summarizing as a class. Let's look at the first paragraph of our article:
“Blue whales love to sing. Males sing to communicate across long distances. Scientists use special audio equipment to study the songs. Over many decades, they’ve noticed something. The songs have gotten lower in pitch. Pitch describes how high or low a sound is.”
6. Say: 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: Blue whales love to sing. Do you think that is an important fact to know? (Discuss.) This is a fun fact but for the purpose of a summary we don’t need it, so we can put a line through that. Let's keep reading: Males sing to communicate across long distances. This could potentially be important so let’s just underline it with our pencils first and we can come back and see if it applies to the overall main point. Let’s keep going: Scientists use special audio equipment to study the songs. Over many decades, they’ve noticed something. I think we can see that the first sentence can be highlighted because it seems like the most important sentence we have read so far. And we can mark out the sentence right after it because it is just fluffing to make the story flow. Let’s read the last sentences in this paragraph: The songs have gotten lower in pitch. Pitch describes how high or low a sound is. This is harder to know because both of these seem important, but we can mark out the second sentence because yes that is an important fact to know but it is not important to the overall point of the article. We can also then highlight the first sentence because that gives us more information about what this article will talk about. So, we have worked on rules 1 and 2 by underlining and highlighting the first part of this article. Now I will show you how to use rule 3 and create a topic sentence using the parts I have highlighted. We have Scientists use special audio equipment to study the songs and the songs have gotten lower in pitch. We can put this in a short sentence by saying “scientists use special audio equipment to study whale songs and have found that over the years they are being lower in pitch.” This is a great topic sentence because it tells you what the main point the article will try to show you. How scientists are using audio equipment to hear whale sounds and what is the new development with their research. I can assume that the rest of the article will be about why whale sounds are lowering in pitch.
7. Say: “Does everyone understand what I just did and how summarizing works? Does anyone have any questions?”
8. Say: Now I'm going to let you all practice summarizing with the rest of this article. I want you to go through each paragraph 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 if necessary so that it makes sense. I want you to write a topic sentence for each paragraph in the article. Then at the end try to sum up the whole article. Remember that just because a sentence was important in the one paragraph you were analyzing does not mean it needs to be included in your overall summary. After you finish the assignment you can color your flip book but do not rush through this you will be graded eventually on this skill so practice now. Cannot wait to see how your summaries look.
ASSESSMENT
I will review each student's topic sentences as well for the entire article as the markings on each of their articles. I will use the assessment checklist for each student listed above to know whether each student followed the rules and understood how to summarize accordingly. Their sentences for each paragraph will vary slightly, but a good topic sentence for the second paragraph might be: Leroy and a team of scientists have studied more than a million whale songs over seven years to understand why they are not signing as loudly. I will assess their summaries for the entire article and give Good Job stickers if they are able to summarize the whole article in one sentence. If I can see they are struggling I will pull them when it is a good time for the class and go over it with them in small groups to help make sure their summarizing skills are strong.
REFERENCES
Dr. Bruce Murray, Making Site Words
Whale Article: https://www.timeforkids.com/g34/changing-tunes/
Example Article:https://www.kidsdiscover.com/quick-reads/harriet-tubman-freed-hundreds-slaves-underground-railroad/
Flying High with Summerization By: Samual Walker:https://svwalker96.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn
Sullins Toomey: Reading to Learn: Whale Can You Summarize?
