Reading to Learn

Summarizing with Sam the Shark

Reading to Learn

Rationale: Reading comprehension is the overall goal of reading which entails getting the overall message of a passage. To do this a reader can use summarization to get the message. 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:

Poster with summarization steps
Poster with paragraph 3 (from the article) typed out in big font
Thick Sharpie poster marker & highlighter (for teacher)
Highlighters (one for each student)
Notebook Paper (two pages for each student)
Pencils (one for each student)
Individual copies of the article about sharks:
https://easyscienceforkids.com/all-about-sharks/
Summarization checklist (one for each student; see bottom of page)
Comprehension quiz (one for each student; see bottom of page)

Procedures:

Explain why summarization is important:

Say: “Good readers do not try to remember every detail they read, instead they summarize. Summarizing is how we take large sections of text and reduce them to the most important parts: the gist, the key ideas, the main points, and remembering. Good readers use this strategy to remember the most important points from the author.

Hang summarization poster on board & review summarization steps:

Say: “We have to do three things when we summarize:

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.”

Say: “I am going to show you how I do these steps to summarize with a paragraph on sharks which is the article that the entire class will read today.”

Book talk: Whose favorite animal is a shark? (waits for a show of hands). Do you know what family sharks belong to? Does anyone know what they eat, or why learning about them is so important? You will know the answers to these questions by the end of today.

Teach a class about important vocabulary in the passage:

Say: “Understanding important vocabulary in the passage is very important for reading comprehension. Together, we are going to go over a few words that you will see while reading the article on sharks.” [For each word: explain the word in simple language, model how to use the word (What does it mean? What doesn’t it mean?), provide sample questions using the word, and scaffold by making a sentence using the word for students to complete.]

WORDS: predator, propeller, carnivore, pup

Example: Say: “Predator is one of the words in your passage so let’s look at what it means. It means an animal that naturally preys on other animals. A species of animals is a predator for another type of species of animals. They could eat or harm the other animal. Which of these is an example of a predator? Wolves are major predators of rodents.

(Hang poster with paragraph 3 on it beside poster with summarization rules. The teacher needs thick sharpie and highlighter. Pass out the shark article to each student along with highlighter and pencil.)

Say: “This is a paragraph from our article. I am going to show you how I summarize this paragraph. You can follow along and do it with me on your paper. Let’s go back over the summarization steps:

1st step: Cross out any unimportant or repeated information (or fluff) that isn’t essential to the message of the text.
2nd step: Find and highlight the important information that is essential to the text.
3rd step: 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 2 because sentence 2 isn’t important to the main idea of the paragraph.

“More people die every year from bee stings, natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes or lightning strikes, volcanoes, and tens of thousands die in car and road accidents.”

Next, I need to highlight important information. I think that sentences 1 and 3 are important to the paragraph so I am going to highlight both sentences.

“The truth is, only 25 species (out of 368 species) attack humans, and only about 100 people each year are attacked by sharks. The bull shark is the shark most often responsible for attacks because it swims in the same shallow waters preferred by swimmers.”

The last thing that I need to do is form a topic sentence from what I have highlighted. (Write topic sentence below the paragraph on the poster so students can see): Sharks, especially bull sharks, are responsible for a lot of attacks on humans who are swimming.

Students summarize:

Say: “It is now time for you to use the summarization rules we discussed.”

Say: “What information is not important so we can cross it out? (waits on answers from students) Yes, we can cross out the second sentence. So, what are we left with? (waits on answers from students) Right, we are left with the first and third sentence. Let’s read these two sentences and see if we can combine them into one sentence to create a topic sentence.

Students write own topic sentence: (pass out two pieces of paper to each student for them to write their topic sentences on)

Say: “I would like for all of you to finish reading the article and use our 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 important facts about sharks. Remember to not summarize the unimportant or repeated information. When you summarize you are writing a short version of the article in your own words while including only the important information. When everyone is finished with their topic sentences, we will have a short quiz.”

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
The sentence brought ideas together from each paragraph
Sentences organized coherently into essay form

Quiz: (Pass out a quiz to each student)
1. How long have sharks been on earth?
2. How many teeth can they have in their mouth at one time?
3. TRUE OR FALSE: Sharks have night vision.
4. Sharks are known as _______ eaters.
5. Instead of bones, what do sharks have?

Answers: 420 million tears, 3000 teeth, TRUE, picky, cartilage

References:

Shark Text:

https://easyscienceforkids.com/all-about-sharks/

Paula Anderson, “Let’s Sea How to Summarize” Reading Genie

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

Kendall Peel, “Summarizing in the Sea” Reading Genie

https://kmp0054.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/reading-to-learn-design

Click here to return to the Communication Index

Contact