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Flying Our Way to Summarization

Reading to Learn Design

By: Hannah Atchley 

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Rationale: For readers to be able to read accurately and comprehend a text, readers begin to use the summarization skill, an essential skill in reading comprehension. To be able to summarize a text, a reader must be able to distinguish important information in the text from the less significant information in a text. Summarization includes being able to find the umbrella terms for the events that happen in a text (superordination). This lesson is used to teach students how to summarize and how to demonstrate their understanding of the text. 

 

 

Materials:

  1. Individual copies of the article “Flamingo”

  2. Whiteboard

  3. Expo marker

  4. Vocabulary words (potential, shallow, and waterway) on construction paper

  5. Small whiteboards for each student

  6. Expo markers for each student

  7. Paper

  8. Pencil

  9. Highlighters

  10. Assessment Checklist 

 

Procedure:

  1. Say: [First, begin the lesson by explaining summarization and the importance of it.] “When we read a text, it can sometimes feel overwhelming when trying to think about the details and points of the story. However, I have good news! An awesome reader does not need to memorize every single detail in a text, and I know you all are awesome readers. To be able to remember only the important details of a text, we must be able to summarize. Summarization is a skill that is used to remember the important details of a text that the author is trying to get across to the reader. By using the summarization skill, we can take a text with a lot of words and shrink it down to a short gist that is easy to remember. 

  2. Say: Today, we are going to fly our way to summarization by looking at an article about flamingos. Does anyone know what a flamingo is or know anything about flamingos? [Give students time to think and answer]. Before we begin reading the flamingo article, let’s go over some vocabulary words from the article that might be a little tricky as we read: potential, shallow, and waterway. Potential means something that shows the ability to become or develop in the future. Something that has potential is someone or something being able to do something in the future. For example, you have the potential to be an amazing reader by learning how to summarize a text. Our next word is shallow. If something is shallow, that means that it has very little depth, or very little distance from top to bottom. For example, if I were to dig a hole that is not very deep, the hole would be considered shallow. Our next word is waterway. A waterway is a river, canal, or other route that is traveled by water. For example, there is a river outside the school that travels one way so a river is considered a waterway. 

  3. Say: I am going to stick our vocabulary word cards on the whiteboard in case you need to look back at the words to remember which ones we talked about. [Place the words on the board] Let’s practice using the words so we can truly understand what they mean. [Pass out whiteboards and expo markers to each student] I am going to write the sentences on the board, and I want all of you to write on your whiteboard what word I should place in the sentence. Hold your boards up when you’re done. [Write on the board, “The student has the ________ to learn the vocabulary words.] Let me see your answers! [Students flip boards around and teacher places the correct word in the blank. If any students got it wrong, review the definition of the word and why it fits] Let’s try our next sentence. [Write on the board, “I cooked the casserole in a _______ dish.”] Let me see what you got! [Students flip boards around and teacher places the correct word in the blank. If any students got it wrong, review the definition of the word and why it fits]. Now, let’s try our last sentence. [Write on the board, “The stream in my backyard is a perfect ________ for the fish to live.”] Let me see what all of you answered. [Students flip boards around and teacher places the correct word in the blank. If any students got it wrong, review the definition of the word and why it fits.]

  4. Say: “Next, we are going learn the rules of summarization so that we can master summarization and become even better readers! I am going to pass out some blank paper and pencils. [Pass out paper and pencil to each student] I want everyone to write, “Summarization Rules” at the top of their paper. [Write on the whiteboard with the students so they know what to write] Next, I want you to write “#1 Delete.” [Write it on the board with the students] Does anyone know what delete means? [Give students time to raise their hand and answer] Right! To delete something means to get rid of it. Earlier, we talked about what we have to do in order to summarize a text, and one of those things was to delete text that we think is not important and will not help us figure out the main idea of the text. Next, I want you to write, “#2 shorten.” [Write it on the board with the students] What does the word “shorten” mean? [Give students time to raise their hand and answer] Shorten means to turn something that is long into something that is short, or smaller. We want to shorten a passage so that we can quickly figure out the meaning of the passage or story. Let’s practice shortening a sentence. [Write on the board, “I like to play soccer, baseball, football, and basketball.”] How could we shorten this sentence? I know that soccer, baseball, football, and basketball are all sports. Instead of saying “I like to play soccer, baseball, football, and basketball.” I could say, “I like to play many sports.” [Write the sentence on the board below the first sentence] That sentence is much smaller! Alright, let’s now add one more item to our summarization rules sheet. The last rule is “#3 create.” [Write it on the board with the students]. Once we have deleted unnecessary details and shortened the long parts, we will create a short main idea sentence for the paragraph.

  5. Say: Now we are going to practice summarization so that we have it down before you try it on your own! [Pass out the “Flamingo” article to each student] This is the article we will be looking at and it is about Flamingos! Has anyone seen a flamingo before? What is something you know about flamingos? Can they run on water? How many babies can they have? I want to know if flamingos can fly. Our “Flamingo” article will tell us about a lot of those questions we have and maybe even a little more interesting things about flamingos. Let’s read our article to find out and then we will talk about it when everyone is done. [Give students plenty of time to read the article] Since we have been talking about summarization, what do you think we will do now with our article? Exactly! We are going to summarize. However, the first thing we need to do is #1 delete. We need to delete information we do not think is very important. Let’s look at our first sentence. “When a flamingo spots potential dinner—favorite foods include shrimp, snails, and plantlike water organisms called algae—it plunges its head into the water, twists it upside down, and scoops the fish using its upper beak like a shovel.” Do we think this sentence is important? I think it is! Let’s take our highlighter and highlight that sentence since we think it is important. What is a sentence that we think is less important? [Give the students time to answer] I think that the sentence in the second paragraph, “The parents take turns sitting on the egg to keep it warm.” is not very important, so I am going to use my pencil to cross that one out. 

  6. Say: Now let’s move on to our next step. #2- Shortening. Let’s look back at our sentence, “When a flamingo spots potential dinner—favorite foods include shrimp, snails, and plantlike water organisms called algae—it plunges its head into the water, twists it upside down, and scoops the fish using its upper beak like a shovel.” Let’s see if we can shorten this sentence. It looks like we can take away the definition of algae because it just makes our sentence longer. We can just name the foods that flamingos eat, and then add how they get their food. It looks like those are our important facts. Do y’all agree? [Wait and let them answer] I think a shorter way to say this sentence would be, “Flamingos eat shrimp, snails, and algae by diving into the ocean, twisting, and scooping the food with their beaks.” [Write the sentence on the board] This is an example of how we can shorten a sentence. 

  7. Say: Now let’s practice our next step. #3 create. We are going to create a sentence that covers the main idea of the paragraph. We want to create a sentence for each paragraph that covers the main ideas without losing any information that is important. Let’s look at the whole paragraph about flamingos at the beginning of the article. “When a flamingo spots potential dinner—favorite foods include shrimp, snails, and plantlike water organisms called algae—it plunges its head into the water, twists it upside down, and scoops the fish using its upper beak like a shovel. They are able to "run" on water, thanks to their webbed feet, to gain speed before lifting up into the sky.” There are two sentences in this paragraph that I want to make into one sentence. This paragraph looks to be about how flamingos catch their food and what they eat. This looks to be the main idea of the paragraph. Now, let’s turn it into one sentence that captures the main idea accurately. [Write the paragraph on the board] Let’s try to figure out what information we could cross out. [Cross out information that is unnecessary] “Flamingos hunt their food by running on water using their webbed feet, diving into the water, twisting upside down, and scooping up algae, shrimp, or snails with their beak.” [Write the new sentence on the board] Our new sentence deletes all of our unnecessary details, shortens the sentence, and focuses on the main topic. 

  8. Say: [Pass out pieces of paper and pencils to each student] Now that we have practiced summarization, I want you all to finish summarizing the article on your own. Write down your summarizations on a piece of paper. 

  9. [After the students have finished their summarizations, the teacher will have them turn them in and ask comprehension questions].

 

 

Assessment: Ask the students comprehension questions after they turn in their summarizations. Teacher will go over each summary and use the chart provided. If the student’s summarization checklists are mostly or all “yes,” this means that the student understands summarization. 

 

 

 

 

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Comprehension Questions:

  1. Why do flamingos “run” on water?

  2. How many days does it take for a flamingo egg to hatch?

  3. What color are baby flamingos when they are born?

  4. Why do the parent flamingos sit on their eggs?

  5. How do flamingo parents identify their chick?

  6. Why do young flamingos go back to their parents after leaving the nest?

 

 

Resources:

Flamingo Article: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/flamingo

Stuart, Katie: Swinging into Summarization: https://katiestuart265.wixsite.com/my-site/reading-to-learn

Reading Genie Awakenings Index: https://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/awakenings/

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