Summarizing with Sharks

 

 

 

 

 

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Rationale: The main goal of reading is to obtain comprehension of what you are reading. You want to be able to gain an understanding of the overall message of a passage. To figure out the main message the reader can use summarization. In this lesson students will summarize a passage by picking out the most important information, finding umbrella terms, eliminating the unnecessary details and listing key points.

 

Materials:

• Poster with steps for summarization

• Poster with paragraph 1 (from article) typed out in BIG font

• Sharpie poster marker (thick) - teacher

• Highlighter – teacher

• Highlighters for students

• Notebook paper – 2 pages per student

•  Pencils – one per student

• Individual copies of Scholastic Article- http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3753069

• Summarization checklist – 1 per student

• Comprehension Quiz – I per student 

 

Procedures:

1. Explain why summarization is important: Say: “when we think about a good reader, we know they do not try to remember every detail that they read. Instead, they summarize the information they read. Summarizing means to take a large section of a text and pick out the most important parts of it, by reducing it. The important parts are: the gist, key details, main points, and remembering. As readers, we need to find the umbrella term of the passage. This is the term that really identifies what the entire passage is about. This strategy is used by good readers to remember the most important details from the author. 

 

1. Summarization Poster – Review Summarization tips: Say: “Here are three things we must do when we summarize a text:

 

1st– We must cross out any unimportant details or repeated information that is not important to the message of the text. 

2nd– We must find and highlight the most important information that is essential to the meaning of the text. 

3rd– We must form a topic sentence from the key information that we highlighted. 

 

Say: “Now, I am going to show and model for you how I do these exact steps to summarize with a paragraph on sharks, which is from an article that the whole class will read today.”

 

 

Book Talk:

Is anyone’s favorite animal a shark? (show of hands). Has anyone ever seen a shark? How much do you already know about sharks? Do you know where they migrate to or how we keep track of them? Let’s read this article to find out!

 

Vocab Review

Say: In order for us to understand this article, we have to understand some key vocabulary words. Let’s look at some words that will appear in the passage you will be reading. (for each word- explain in simple language and then model how to use the word, provide sample questions using the word and then scaffold by making a sentence using the word)

WORDS: prey, migration, decoy, acoustic

 

Example- Say: One of your words is migration, let’s look at what that means. It means a seasonal movement of animals from one region to another. Many animals actually migrate during different seasons of the year. Some go north into the cold and some go south to warmer weather. Birds that fly south for the winter are demonstrating what? (migration).

 

4. (Hang poster with paragraph 1 on it beside poster with summarization rules. Teacher should get a thick sharpie and highlighter for this activity. Pass out the shark article to each student, along with a highlighter and pencil for each.)

Say: “Here is a paragraph from our article. I am now going to show you how to summarize this text. I want you to follow along and do it with me, but on your own paper. First, let’s review our summarization steps:

- 1st– We must cross out any unimportant details or repeated information that is not important to the message of the text. 

- 2nd– We must find and highlight the most important information that is essential to the meaning of the text. 

- 3rd– We must form a topic sentence from the key information that we highlighted. 

 

First, I need to cross out any information in the text that is not important, or that is repeated. I can cross out sentence 1 because it is not important to the main idea of the text. Next, I need to highlight all of the important information. I think that sentences 2, 3, and 4 are important to the paragraph, so I am going to highlight those sentences Sentence one is just asking us a question, it isn’t giving us useful information we need to know, that’s why we can cross it out.

We will repeat these steps for the next paragraph before we move onto writing our own topic sentence.

 

Students write their own topic sentence:

(pass out 2 pieces of paper to each student for them to write their topic sentences).

Say: “Now class I want you to individually finish reading the article and use our rules of summarization to make a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are finished, you will be able to look at your paper and see a very good summary of the article as a whole. This information will help you remember the important details about sharks that we have learned today. Remember to eliminate the unimportant information that does not add to the main idea of the text. When you are summarizing, remember that you are just writing a short version of the article in your own words, while including only the important facts. So, when everyone finishes all of their topic sentences, turn your paper over and put your pencils down. We will then take a short quiz to test your comprehension of this lesson. 

 

Assessment:(Collect the student’s summaries of the article and evaluate the summarization by using this checklist):

• collected important information from the text

• significantly reduced the text from the original format

• sentence brought the ideas together from each individual paragraph

• sentences are organized correctly into essay form

 

Quiz:

 

1. What did the new study show about sharks swimming close to the beach?

2. Why did the scientists tag sharks?

3. What did researchers use to lure sharks to their boats?

4. How many deadly shark attacks have there been since 1952 in California?

5. What else did tagging sharks help researchers learn?

 

1. It did not suggest that humans were in any more danger from sharks than scientists thought because sharks aren’t that interested in people

2. To track them

3. Decoys

4. 10

5. migration patterns

 

References:

 

Hannah Hardin, Summarizing with Silky Snake-https://hanhardin1020.wixsite.com/readinglessondesigns/reading-to-learn-design

 

Shark text- http://www.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3753069

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