Jessica Sullivan

Rationale:

After learning to read correctly and fluently, students must proceed to the next step, which is learning 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 centered on teaching students how to summarize by eliminating trivial information that is consistently repeated, leaving only the most important facts.

 

Materials:

• Class set of the article "Newly Discovered Frog Looks Like Kermit" by Joyce Grant of Teaching Kids News

• Poster with the rules of summarization written on it

• Checklist of Summarization Rules: (delete the trivia, or unimportant information, find the important information, create a topic sentence if one is not already presented.)

• Assessment chart for each student (for teacher use)

• Colored marker for each student

• Lined paper for each student

• Projector

 

Procedures:

1. Teacher says: "Raise your hand if you have ever read an article or a book and told a friend about the reading? Do you read them the whole book, or do you just tell them the important parts of what you read? (Call on student). Yes! You only tell them important parts of the story! This is called a summary of the book or article. Summarization is a very helpful strategy good readers use to help comprehend or understand what they are reading. If you can summarize a book or article, it is a good indication that you are able to understand what you’ve read.

 

2. Before we practice summarization let’s review what we have learned this week about frogs. Earlier we discussed that frogs are amphibians and are born in water to later live on land. What were some other facts about frogs? Yes, tadpoles do look more like fish than frogs. The female frog lays the eggs in the water and when they hatch, the eggs are tadpoles. Who can tell me how long it takes for the tadpoles to metamorphoses into adult frogs? Very good, it takes about 12 weeks, sometimes all the way to 16 weeks for a tadpole to become a frog. Do you think it would be easy to live like a frog? I don’t think so! It wouldn’t be fun to live under water for 16 weeks, and besides we couldn’t breathe underwater could we! NOOOO!

3. I am so impressed that you all remembered so much about the frogs. So keep up the good work. Now, let's talk more about summarization. Everybody take out a marker and a sheet of paper. Turn your paper horizontal, like a hot dog, and divide it into three different columns. Okay, now let's look at our "Rules of Summarizing" poster. Can someone read the first rule of summarizing? Yes, the first rule of summarizing is to delete the trivia, or unimportant information. We don’t want to keep any repeated information. Everybody write this rule at the top of the first column on your piece of paper. It is very useful to cross out important information if you can mark on the article you are reading, but if you are reading a book you will probably have to make a mental note that certain parts may not be as important as others. This will help you to understand the message the author is trying to tell you. Now look at the second rule. The second rule is to find the important information. Everybody write this rule at the top of the second column. When you find something that is important in the book or article you are reading, underline or highlight the sentence so that you can go back and remember that it must be important. The final rule of summarization is to make a topic sentence. Everybody write this rule at the top of the third column on your paper. Making a topic sentence can be very challenging because most texts don't have topic sentences incorporated. A topic sentence combines all of the important information in a short, condensed way so that you are able to summarize and comprehend the paragraph you read.

 

4. Teacher says: "Now we are going to practice summarizing with an article called " Newly Discovered Frog Looks Like Kermit ". According to this article, scientists have discovered a new type of frog. Let’s read the article to find out more about this new frog. Let's look at the first paragraph of the article together: " Recently, a scientist discovered a type of frog that looks a lot like Kermit.

Kermit the Frog is a muppet—a well-known puppet frog that has bulgy eyes and is a special shade of green. The frog found in Costa Rica looks a lot like that. It has big google-eyes with black pupils that sit on the top of its head, and it is a uniform shade of bright lime green, similar to Kermit. Just about the only thing it’s missing is Kermit’s signature pointy collar. (And Kermit’s ability to speak, of course.)

The recently discovered frog is a type of glassfrog. It has been named Hyalinobatrachium dianae, after the mother of one of the scientists; her middle name is Diane.”

 

5. “Now that we have read our summary, were there any words that seemed unfamiliar or you did not know the definition of? What about the word ‘collar’? Does anyone know what this word means? A collar is a band of material around the neck of the shirt. Let’s use this word in a sentence. ‘My dad has a collar on his shirt.’ Do you have a collar on your shirts? Raise your hand if you do! Wonderful! Now I want you to write a sentence using the word ‘collar’. Would anyone like to share his or her sentence? Great job, you used collar correctly in a sentence! Now let’s move on and start summarizing!”

 

6. Everybody watch me as I use my rules to summarize this paragraph. (Pull out a pre-made copy of the 3 columns on paper). Let's look at the first sentence: “Recently, a scientist discovered a type of frog that looks a lot like Kermit.” Is it important that scientist discovered a new type of frog? I do think that this sentence is important. It explains what the paragraph is going to talk about. I am going to write sentence one under my second column of important information. I notice that the second sentence describes whom Kermit the Frog is. I do not think it is important so let’s write this under the first column and cross it out. I notice that the third and fourth sentence talks about where these frogs are found and how they are similar to Kermit. I think the third sentence is important so I am going to write it in my second column. However, I think that the fourth sentence is redundant and can be taken out, so I’m going to write this down in my first column. Let's look at the next part- “The recently discovered frog is a type of glassfrog. It has been named Hyalinobatrachium dianae, after the mother of one of the scientists; her middle name is Diane." Okay, I believe the most important part of this is that they recently discovered a glassfrog. I think we can cross out the scientific name just because that is a huge word and will be hard to remember. Now I am going to write this information in the second column. Now let’s mark an X over the rest of the information and write it in the first column because I do not think it is important.

 

7. Now that we have finished the first paragraph let’s try to create a topic sentence. Remember the topic sentence is one sentence that explains what the paragraph is talking about. So we only need to look at the second column for the important information. I have that “A scientist discovered a type of frog that looks a lot like Kermit. The frog found in Costa Rica looks a lot like Kermit. It has been named Hyalinobatrachium dianae.” I would make this a topic sentence by saying: Scientist have found a new frog in Costa Rica that looks like Kermit the Frog, they have named it Hyalinobatrachium dianae. This sentence has all the important parts of the paragraph and is a good summary of the paragraph. Does anybody have any questions?

 

8. Now I want you all to summarize the other paragraphs. Remember to write down important and non-important information in each column to help you create a topic sentence. Feel free to look at our summarizing poster if you need help. Create a topic sentence for each paragraph and when you have finished, staple the article to your paper with your columns, and turn it in to me

 

9. Assessment:

I will review each student's column chart to determine if they could successfully summarize the different paragraphs. I will use the assessment checklist to record each child's grade. Topic sentences may vary slightly, but I will be looking to see if they child included the important information in each.

 

Comprehension Questions:

1. Where have scientists found this new type of frog?

2. Which character do scientists think this new frog looks like?

3. Who is the scientific name for this new frog?

 

Assessment Checklist:

Student Name: ___________________________

1.   Did the student fill out the chart on his/her paper?                                

2.   Did the students come up with topic sentences for the remaining paragraphs?

3.   Did the student successfully delete unimportant/redundant information?

4.   Did the student successfully identify important parts?

5.   Did the student use the important information to come up with topic sentence?

 

Resources:

Holley, Cate: “Buzzing into Summing”

 

Teachingkidsnews.com: “Newly Discovered Frog Looks Like Kermit.”

 

Below is a PDF file of the lesson above: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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