Let’s Sea how to Summarize 

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Rationale: Summarization is one of the two most powerful strategies for comprehending text. Summarization is an important literacy goal because it helps students to understand what had been read. By teaching children how to delete useless and redundant information and finding or creating a topic sentence that covers the main idea of this text, we can help students remember information that they read and gain better reading comprehension. In this lesson, students will learn to summarize a passage by highlighting the important information, crossing out the unnecessary information, and describing the passage in a few sentences. 

 

Materials:

1. Poster with the step of summarization 

2. Poster with paragraph 5 typed out

3. Sharpie post marker and highlighter

4. Highlights-one for each student to use

5. Notebook paper for students

6. Pencils

7. Individual copies of the National Geographic about sea otters

8. Summarization checklist- one per student 

9. Comprehension quiz

 

Procedures: 

1. Say: “When we read a text, we could spend all day trying to remember all the words and details of that text. Good readers do not try to remember every little detail that they read. Instead, they use summarization strategies to remember only the important points the author is making about the topic. Today we are going to learn and practice three steps that will help us remember the important information we need to understand the text.”

2. (Hand the summarization poster on the board and review it.) Say: “We are going to do three things when summarizing: 1. Cross out any unimportant or repeated information that isn’t essential to the message of the test. 2. Find and highlight the important information that is essential to the text. 3. Form a topic sentence from the important information and highlight it.

3. Say: “In a few minutes I’m going to show you how I would do these steps of summary with an article on sea otters which is what you are going to be reading. (Give book talk) Book talk: Is anyone’s favorite animal a sea otter? Do you know which family the sea otters belong to or how about what they eat everyday? Let’s read and see if we can find 

out the answer to these questions and learn so much more!”

  4. Say: “Another important strategy in reading comprehension is learning what words mean. To do this, we are going to go over a few words that we find in the article before we begin reading (for each word, explain the word in simple language, model how to use the world ex.) What does it mean or what it doesn’t mean/ provide sample questions using the word and scaffold it by making a sentence using the word for students to complete.)

Words: Entangle, extinction, insulating

Say: “Extinctions is used in our passage let’s look at what that word means. Extension means the process of a species disappearing. 

A species of animals would be heading towards extinction if there were on a few animals of that species left.

Which of these is animal of extinction: One elephant of a certain species died or multiple of a certain species died and there are only a few more left? 

Pandas are heading towards extinction because…(only a few of them are still left.)”

5. Hang the poster with paragraph 5 on it beside poster with summarization rules. Teacher needs sharpie and highlighter. Pass out the sea otter article to each student along with highlighter and pencil. ​

· 1st: Cross out any unimportant or repeated information (or fluff) that isn’t essential to the message of the text.

· 2nd: Find and highlight the important information that is essential to the text.

· 3rd: Form a topic sentence from the important information you highlighted.”

First, I need to cross out any unimportant or repeated information. I can cross out sentence 1 because sentence 1 isn’t important to the main idea of the paragraph. Next, I need to highlight the important information. I think that sentences 2 and 3 are important to the paragraph so I am going to highlight both sentences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I do that, I’m going to form a topic sentence from my highlighted information. By looking at my highlighted information, I can come up with my topic sentence (write topic sentence below the paragraph on the poster so that students can see it): Sea otters need to keep their fur clean for it to stay waterproof so that it will keep them warm.

6. Say: “It’s you turn to use the summarization rules that we went over earlier on this paragraph. know you can do it!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Say: “What unimportant information can we cross out? Yes, we can cross out the very last sentence. Now what does that leave us with? You are so right! That leaves us with only the first and second sentence. Let’s read the two sentences and try to combine them into one sentence to create a topic sentence. Topic sentence: Sea otters float on their backs to eat so that they are able to use rocks to help them reveal the tasty meat inside. 

7. (Pass out 2 pieces of paper for each student so they can write their topic sentence down.) Say: “Now I’d like you to finish reading the article and use your summarizing rules to make a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are finished, you will have a good summary of the article. This will help you remember the important facts you learned about sea otters. We will have a short quiz when everyone finishes their topic sentences.” 

 

Assessment: [Collect each student’s summary of the article and evaluate the summarization using the following checklist:]

 

______ Collected important information

______ Ignored trivia and examples in summary

______ Significantly reduced the text from the original

______ Sentences brought ideas together from each paragraph

______ Sentences organized coherently into essay form

 

 Quiz: [Pass out a quiz to each student.]

         1. What family is the sea otter a part of? (Weasel famil

         2. How do sea otters keep themselves from moving in the sea? (The entangle          themselves in kelp or seaweed)

         3. Why do sea otters float on their backs? (To nap and to eat)

                      4. Why do sea otters need to keep their fur clean? (So that it stays waterproof)

                      5. Why is a sea otter’s fur important? (It keeps them warm and insulated)

 

References:

Website for Sea Otter Reading:

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/sea-otter#sea-otter-closeup2.jpg  

Sailing Through Summarization by: Carly Grisham https://carlymgrisham.wixsite.com/mscarlyreading/reading-to-learn  

Turtle-lly Awesome Summarization by: Caroline Colley

https://mcc0052.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn  

Let’s Sea how to summarize by: Paula Anderson 

https://pea0002.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn  

Using About-Point to Awaken the Main Idea by: Bruce Murray

https://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/