Rationale: The goal of reading is comprehending what has been read. After fluency has been practiced and achieved, readers can learn how to and work on comprehension. Comprehensive reading is how well the student is understanding and remembering what they are reading. Comprehensive reading allows students to learn from what they are reading. In order to be able to read to learn, students must be able to master summarization of texts. Summarizing teaches students how to pick the most important information in the text while not focusing on minor details. The way to teach Summarization and comprehension skills is to take notes. By taking notes, students learn how to omit unnecessary and focus on the main ideas and major points of the text. This lesson will help students to learn how to find the main ideas in a text, construct meaning from the text, and summarize the text

 

Materials:

Paper, pencil, highlighter for every student 

Summarization checklist (write on the board for students to put on bookmark)

Bookmark strips (construction paper) for summarization rules:

  1. Read the text

 

  2. Decide what sentences from the text are most important that help say the main idea

 

  3. Highlight the important information and take out minor details

 

  4. Find an umbrella term for everything that happens in the paragraph by using highlighted sentences. 

 

  5. Write a summary sentence that explains what the text is about 

 

“What is Snow Made of? Snowflake Facts for Kids” article

Summarization grading rubric (under assessment)

Comprehension questions 

 

 

 

Procedures:

 

1. Say: “Today we are going to learn how to summarize a story. Summarizing is when we read a text and we say what important things happened. We are going to practice how to summarize by reading two stories. When we read each story we are going to determine what the main idea is, what supports the main idea, and what details we can leave out of our summary.

 

2. Say: “now we are going so learn the rules of summarizing. (Pass out bookmark sized paper) I am going to write down how to summarize on the board and I want you to copy it on the piece of paper I just handed out. We will use this as a bookmark so that you all can refer back to it on how to summarize.

 

3. (Say and write down these steps): “Step one we are going to read the text. Step two is that we are going to decide what sentences from the text are most important (the ones that express key information and main ideas). Step three is to highlight the important information and omit the minor details. Step four is find an umbrella term for everything that happens in the paragraph by using highlighted sentences. Step five is write a summary sentence that explains what the text is about.

 

4. Say: “Now I am going to give you all the article “What is Snow Made of? Snowflake Facts for Kids” to read (pass out a copy of the passage for each student to read and highlight). Have you ever been in the snow? Do you like the snow? Well down in the south when we do get snow it is pretty mild. In more northern areas of the world they not only get lots of snow, they have blizzards. We are going to read and find out what snow is and how it affects our world.” 

 

5. Read the first section together labeled “What is snow?” Model the summarizing instructions that are on the newly made bookmarks by asking the class If each sentence is important or not. If they say yes and they are correct, highlight with the students. If they say no and they are correct, move pass the sentence without highlighting. Model how to write a summary of the passage for the class with the information that was highlighted as a class.

 

6. Say: “now students, I want you to read and highlight the important information in the rest of the article and write a one sentence summary for each section. Then write a three-five sentence summary over the entire article.”

 

7. After all the students have finished, go over what should have been highlighted and why and then ask students to read their summaries to the class. Allow time for students to fix their summaries and then take them up for assessment.

 

8. Say: Now we are going to review vocabulary. We are going to talk about the word "precipitation" from your text. Precipitation is water released from clouds in the form of rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow, or hail. So, you could say, "Snow is a form of precipitation," or you could say, "Precipitation is a part of the water cycle." So class, if it is raining outside and I get soaking wet, what part of the water cycle is happening? (answer: precipitation) Now class, see if you can fill in the blank in this sentence. "The precipitation that was falling from the sky was ice crystals and it formed a blanket of white on the ground, this is what kind of precipitation? ________" (answer: snow)

 

9. Ask the class comprehension questions about the passages and have them write down the answer on a sheet of paper. Say: “How are snowflakes formed? What must the temperature be outside for it to snow? How many snowstorms are there normally every year in the US? How tall was the largest snowman? How many ice crystals make up a snowflake?" Take up answers for assessment. Then say: “see how writing these summaries helped you remember the important parts of the story better? This is why we need to know how to summarize what we read.

 

Assessment:

Questions to ask aloud and have students write down the answer to test comprehension:

How are snowflakes formed? 

What must the temperature be outside for it to snow?

How many snowstorms are there normally every year in the US? 

How tall was the largest snowman?

How many ice crystals make up a snowflake?

Reading summary activity rubric:

In his/her summary, did the student…

Delete insignificant information and highlighted the important information? YES / NO

Write the main idea of the article? YES / NO

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

Select the key points from the article? YES / NO

Chose the correct main idea for this article? YES / NO

 

References:

Levins, Emme. https://sites.google.com/view/ctrdlessondesigns/reading-to-learn?authuser=1

What is Snow Made of? Snowflake Facts for Kids. (2019, November 14). Retrieved November

09, 2020, from https://www.kidsplayandcreate.com/what-is-snow-made-of-snowflake-facts-for-kids/