Rationale: The end goal of reading is reading comprehension. When reading, the aim is for students to improve their reading comprehension so that they can get the overall message of a passage. Summarization is a key tool for students to get the message. In this lesson, students will learn to summarize a passage by highlighting important information, describing the passage in a few sentences, and deleting information that is not needed to comprehend the text.

 

Materials:

• A poster for with summarization steps

• Pencil (1 for each student)

• Paper (2 pieces for each student)

• Highlighter (1 for each student)

• Individual copies of “Sea Lion Facts for Kids” (1 for each student)

  • https://dolphins.org/kids_sea_lion_facts

• Summarization checklist (1 for each student)

• Comprehension quiz (1 for each student)

 

Procedures:

• 1. Say: “Today we will be working on how to summarize texts that we read. Summarization is when you take the text you read and condense it to only focus on the important parts of it. This could be done by crossing out repeated or irrelevant information. Good readers do not remember every small detail of the text they read. Good readers always summarize! Summarizing is when we take a large portion of text and simplify them. This helps us reduce the text and make it easier to understand.”

• 2. *Put summarization poster on the board and review the steps.* Say: “When we summarize we do three things:

  • We cross out any repeated or unimportant information that is not relevant to the text.

  • We Find and highlight important information that is relevant to the text.

  • We create a topic sentence based off of the important information you highlighted.”

• 3. Say: “Now I am going to show you how I would do these steps to summarize with an article about sea lions, which is the article that we will be reading today.”

  • Book talk: “Do any of you all know anything about sea lions? Have you ever been to the zoo to see them before? Awesome! Well today we are going to be reading an article with many cool facts about sea lions and how they survive in our world. We are going to find out what they eat, how big they get, what animal they are afraid of, and even more.”

• 4. *Review the important vocabulary that is in the text* Say: “One way to master reading comprehension is understanding the key vocabulary words in a text. We are going to review some of the words in the article that we are reading today.” *For each word, explain the word in very simple language and model how to use the word.* *Provide sample questions using the word, and scaffold by making a sentence using the word for students to complete*

  • WORDS:

    • Life span

    • Flippers

    • Gliding

    • Growth Layers

  • Example- Say: “Flippers: One of the words in our passage is flippers; lets look at what it means

    • 1. Flippers are a broad flat limb without fingers, used for swimming by various sea animals such as seals, whales, and turtles.

    • 2. Flippers help sea animals swim faster and walk on land.

    • 3. Which animal would have flippers: a shark or a sea lion?

    • 4. Sea lions use their flippers to walk on land using… (all 4 of their flippers.)    

• 5. *Hang poster with the part of the article labeled “How fast can a sea lion swim?” next to the poster with the summarization rules. Teacher needs a sharpie and a highlighter. Pass out the article to each of the students.

  • Say : “Here is a paragraph from our article.”

    • “Sea lions can swim at burst speeds up to 25 miles per hour, but most of the time they swim around 11 miles per hour. Sea lions can swim faster by gliding on the surface of the water.”

  •  I am going to show you how I would summarize this paragraph. I want you to follow along with me on your paper. Before we start, Let’s review our summarization steps!”

  • 1st step: Use a pencil to cross out any irrelevant or repeated information that is not important to the main idea of the text.

  • 2nd step: Find and highlight the key information that is important to the text.

  • 3rd step: Create a topic sentence from the key information that you highlighted

  • Say: “First, I need to cross out any irrelevant information/repeated information. I would cross out the first part of the first sentence because it isn’t always how fast sea lions swim. Next, I want to highlight the important information. I would highlight the second part of the first sentence because it tells us how fast sea lions usually swim. I think that the second part of the first sentence and sentence 2 are both important, so I am going to highlight them.”

  • Say: “Lastly I am going to form a topic sentence from my highlighted information. By looking at the highlighted information I can create a topic sentence like: *Write topic sentence below the paragraph on the poster so that the students can see* ‘Sea lions swim around eleven miles an hour and swim fast by gliding through the water.’

• 6. Say: “Now I want you to use the summarization rules we reviewed on another paragraph in the article.”

  • “Actually, sea lions and seals are two different animals. Differences include 1) sea lions have external ear flaps, 2) sea lions walk on land using all four flippers (seals bounce on their bellies) and 3) sea lions use their front flippers to swim (seals use their hind flippers).

  • Say: “What unimportant information can we cross out? Yes, we can cross out the information that talks about seals since we are only focusing on sea lions. We can also cross out the first sentence. Let’s see if we can create a topic sentence based on the information we have left.

  • ‘Sea lions have external ear flaps, walk on land using all 4 slippers, and use their front flippers to swim.’

• 7. *Pass out 2 pieces of paper so each student can write their topic sentence on them* Say: “Now I want you to read the rest of the paragraphs in the article using our summarizing rules to make a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are done, you will have a nice summary of the entire article. This will help you remember facts that we have learned about sea lions. Remember not to summarize any irrelevant information that is not important in helping us remember what we have learned about sea lions. We will have a short quiz to help us review after everyone is done.

• 8. Assessment: Assessing students work and quiz

  • *Collect every student’s summary of the article and evaluate them based on the 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

• Give students a quiz

How are sea lions different than a seal? (sea lions have external ear flaps, walk on land using their flippers, and use their front flippers to swim)

What is the average a sea lion swim in miles per hour? (around 11 miles per hour)

What is one thing sea lions eat? (salmon)

What type of animal eats sea lions? (sharks)

What is the average lifespan of a sea lion? (20 years)

 

 

 

References:

https://dolphins.org/kids_sea_lion_facts

 

Sarah Kowal, “Summarizing with Sea Turtles” https://sak0032.wixsite.com/website-2/rl-design