Swimming into Summarization

 

 

 

 

 

Rationale: After learning to read fluently, students must learn to read comprehensively in order to get the message of a text.  In other words, children must learn to read to learn.  This lesson is designed to teach students how to summarize by eliminating trivial information that is consistently repeated, leaving only the most important facts.

 

Materials:

• Pencils

• Paper

• Highlighters

• White board

• Dry erase markers

• Rubric for grading summaries

• Overhead camera

• Dolphins Call Each Other by Name article

 

Procedures:

 

• Today, we are going to be learning how to summarize an article! Summarizing is when you state only the important information and delete any trivial and repeated information. We are going to practice how to do this skill with two different articles. We will focus on what the main idea is, what facts support the main idea, and what information we can remove.

 

• Now when I pass around this stack of paper, get one sheet. Watch me as I show you how we’re going to fold the paper in a trifold. First, take the paper and fold it over 1/3 of the page. Then with the remaining part of the paper, fold it behind the two parts. Your paper should be split into three sections: a title page, two middle pages, and a back page. Now you try, and I’ll come around and help you if you need.

 

• Now that everyone has folded their paper, let’s go over why we folded our papers like this. We’ll be using it as a study card of the steps for making a summary, and you can use this whenever you need help summarizing articles. The first step in summarization is picking out the most important details and underlining or highlighting them. The second step is finding the repeated details that are unimportant and crossing them out. The third and final step is organizing the information you found in step one. The main idea should be supported by the details. Now, write these steps on a page in your study card. [Ask students to recall the steps to you as you have them write the steps in their cards.] The last page of your study card will be for information that you need to remember about summarizing. For instance, summaries should always be shorter in length than the information you are summarizing.

 

• I’m going to pass out an article now, which is about dolphins. Have you ever thought about how dolphins talk to each other and the language they use? We’re going to read the first two paragraphs as a class. Now that we’ve finished reading, let’s practice summarizing using the first two sentences in the article [display on overhead camera]:Bottlenose dolphins call out the specific names of loved ones when they become separated, a study finds. Other than humans, the dolphins are the only animals known to do this, according to the study, published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

 

• First, we want to look for the main idea in these sentences. Usually the main idea is relevant to the title of the article or mentioned a lot throughout the article. [Ask what students think is the main point.] Great job! The message that this sentence is trying to get across is that Bottlenose dolphins communicate with each other by name when separated, and dolphins are the only animals that do this, so highlight all the information relating to this. While all of the other information is important for reference purposes, it’s not relevant to us right now for summarizing purposes, so we can cross that out. Your sentence should look like this now, but the remaining part of your sentence should be crossed out [display on overhead camera]:Bottlenose dolphins call out the specific names of loved ones when they become separated, a study finds. Other than humans, the dolphins are the only animals known to do this, according to the study, published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

 

• On your first page of your study card, summarize this main idea. The main idea of this information is that Bottlenose dolphins communicate with each other by name. A supporting detail to this would be that dolphins are the only animals who can communicate this way.

 

• Let’s continue to pick out important points in each paragraph of the article. I want you to go through and continue reading the article on your own. Summarize as much as you can, highlighting important parts and marking out any unimportant details.

 

• Everyone’s study cards are looking great so far! Once you’ve read the whole article and gotten the main ideas and supporting details highlighted, I want you to write down a brief summary on the article. At the bottom of your article, write any new vocabulary words you learned from the article and what they mean. Then write a sentence using the vocabulary word. For example, let’s look at the word, mimic. Mimic means to copy. So if I were to use it in a sentence I would say, “The boy mimicked his sister when he kept repeating what she said.”

 

Assessment:

 

Students will be assessed at the end on how well they did on their summaries. I will use this scoring rubric to grade their summaries for the correct information:

In his/her summary, did the student...

 

• Remove trivial information?  YES / NO

• Write a topic sentence?  YES / NO

• Write 3-5 good, concise sentences?  YES / NO

• Select key information from the article?  YES / NO

• Choose the correct main topic for this article?  YES / NO

• List any new vocabulary words/definitions at the end?  YES / NO 

 

I will also ask the students a series of comprehension questions to see if they read and understood the article:

 

• What kind of animal is able to communicate with each other by name? Bottlenose Dolphin

• How do the dolphins call out each others names? A sequence of whistles

• How many miles away can the whistle be detected? About twelve

• Who were the whistles often directed towards? Loved ones

• When do the dolphins emit these whistles? When they are separated 

 

References:

 

Viegas, Jennifer. “Dolphins Call Each Other by Name.” http://news.discovery.com/animals/whales-dolphins/dolphins-call-each-other-by-name-130219.htm

 

Stone, Mallie. “Summarization Station.” http://mvs0002.wix.com/msstonesstudies#!reading-to-learn/ck5r