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Floating through Space towards Summarization

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rationale:Reading is the initial step for students to learn new information. While reading, it is so important for them to differentiate between significant and insignificant information. In this lesson I will teach students how to summarize. Summarizing is a skill that all beginning readers need to practice in order to be successful in reading comprehension. Readers need to learn to summarize so they can successfully find the important details of a text and remember the important information. This lesson is going to teach students the steps they can take in order to master summarizing large passages. The teacher will then model how to summarize an article read aloud to the class. To conclude, the students will practice summarizing the new article independently and be evaluated.

 

Materials:

-A Day in the Life Published by Time for Kids

-Smartboard copy of article

-Handouts of article (1 per child)

-Summary checklist (1 for each student)

-Assessment checklist (for teacher – 1 for each student)

 

Summary Checklist

Did I…

_____ write my topic sentence?

_____ find supporting details to help answer the question?

_____ remove unimportant information by crossing it out?

_____ remove repeated ideas?

_____ create a 3-5 sentence summary?

 

Assessment Checklist

When summarizing, did the student…                  YES       NO

Delete unimportant information?

Delete repeated information?

Organize items with a big idea?

Select a topic?

Write an inclusive, simple topic sentence to summarize the passage?

 

Procedures

        1.) Say: In today's lesson, we are going to be working on summarization. Can anyone tell me what summarization is? (Wait for answers) Summarizing is selecting the most important parts of a text. By doing this, you can find the most useful information without getting confused by things you do not need to know. It is super useful when reading a long book or article that is explaining something.

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        2.) Say: Before we dive into our article, I want us to go over some words that might be a little tricky. Those words are: astronaut, orbited, international, and gravity! These are fun words but if we don’t know what they mean we can’t comprehend them in our story. An Astronaut is a person that travels in space. Peggy is an astronaut and she is going to teach us all about her job as an astronaut in this article! Orbited is a past tense verb meaning to move around an object. In this story “orbited” will be used when we read about how Mrs. Peggy “orbited” around the Earth. International means involving two or more nations. The International Space Station is in orbit around the Earth, it is also where Mrs. Peggy works! Lastly, gravity is the force that keeps objects on Earth from floating as they do in space.

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        3.) Say: When we want to summarize a passage, we read a little bit at a time. When we finish reading that small part we look back and figure out the most important parts. We cross out information that does not add value to the main idea. We must be very selective in choosing the important information.

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        4.) Say: Now that we know what summarization is and why it is important, I am going to model how to do it! To do this I will read an article titled, A Day in the Life. A day in the life of who, you ask? Well, let’s find out! I will read the first three paragraphs of this article and summarize them, watch how I do it. (Open A Day in the Life on the smart board and also hand out one article for each child to follow along. Remember, I only want the most important parts of the paragraph. First I will read the entire first, second and third paragraphs.

 

Read:

          Peggy Whitson is an astronaut. She works for NASA. She loves science. Peggy traveled to space three times. Life in space is different from life on Earth. Find out about Peggy’s life in space.

            She orbited.  Peggy lived here when she was in space. She went around Earth.

            She worked.  Peggy did many science projects. It was her job. One project was to grow salad greens in space.

 

Say: These two paragraphs give us some good information. We are going to underline the MOST important things about these paragraphs. I will underline “Peggy Whitson is an astronaut. She works for NASA” and “Peggy traveled to space three times.” We already know that life is different in space, so let’s move on to the next paragraph. This paragraph goes with a picture of the International Space Station, so remember to reference that when you are reading. We will underline the entire second paragraph because it is all very important, “She orbited” tells us what Peggy did in space, “Peggy lived here when she was in space” tells us about where she was when she was in space” and “She went around Earth” lets us know what she orbited. In our next paragraph we will underline “Peggy did many science projects. It was her job.”, this is important because it tells us the main job that Peggy had to do while she was in space. Although the last sentence in the paragraph about growing salad is interesting, it isn’t important to the overall meaning of the story, so we will leave it out for now.

 

Say: After all that work picking the important parts, lets put together what we have underlined:

            Peggy Whitson is an astronaut. She works for NASA. Peggy traveled to space three times.

            She orbited. Peggy lived here when she was in space. She went around Earth.

Peggy did many science projects. It was her job.

 

        5.) Say: Now that know how to summarize, lets try to summarize the next paragraph together.

 

Read:

             She floated.  Space has very little gravity. Everything there floats. Even people! Peggy’s food floated too. She had to catch it in the air and put it on her spoon.

           

Say: What do you think is most important in this paragraph? (Give students time to offer answers). Underline the most important parts and I will do the same, then we will compare what we all underlined and figure out what we think should stay and what we should take out. (give time and then discuss, come to general consensus and give children a chance to explain why they did or didn’t underline things.)

 

End result:

            Space has very little gravity. Everything there floats. Even people!

           

        6.) Say: Now you are going to work together on summarizing. Read the rest of the article together and try to decide what is important. Underline what you think is most important and cross out what should be left out. Once you are done come get a summary check list and use that list to write a summary of the article using all the underlined information. Don’t worry if your summary is short, that is how it is supposed to be. If you and your partner disagree on something, that’s okay too. Try to discuss why you think differently and see if you can agree on something together.

 

        7.) Once the children have at least finished writing out their summary, call them up one at a time to ask a few comprehension questions.

Ask: What is the name of Peggy’s job?

        Where does she go to do her job?

        What kinds of things did Peggy do in space? What is different about space and earth?

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Take up their summaries and check lists to assess their work and make sure they understood the process of summarization. I will use my assessment checklist to do this.

 

 

References:

      - A Day in the Life Time for Kids: https://www.timeforkids.com/k1/day-in-the-life/

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      - Susanna Fields, Superstar Summarization: http://susannafields95.wixsite.com/literacylessons/reading-to-learn