Reading to Learn

What Time is it? Time to Summarize!

Reading to Learn

Rationale:This lesson teaches students how to read to learn. Part of reading to learn involves being able to comprehend texts. Summarization is one of the most important skills for comprehending a text. The about-point method is a way to help students summarize texts. The reader must ask two questions of the text: 1) what is the text about, which is usually an easier question and becomes the subject of the sentence and 2) what is the main point that the author is making about the topic. This is harder for students because they must “subordinate” the points, meaning they must find an umbrella term that identifies all the main points the author is talking about. This answer becomes the predicate of the topic sentence. Using these two questions and answers, the readers can then create a topic sentence. Students will learn how to summarize by using the about-point method after reading an article.

Materials:Copies of the Animals for Kids article for each student and the teacher, pencils, paper, Summarization checklist for teacher, comprehension quiz.

Procedures:

1. Say: After reading a text, it would be very hard to remember every single word found within that text. This is why we learn how to summarize text. Summarizing is when you read a text and can reduce the text into just a few sentences making it easier to remember what the text was about.

2. Say: One of the best ways to summarize is called about-point. This strategy involves readers asking themselves two questions. The first question is easier and it is “what is the text about?”. The second question requires readers to analyze the whole text to figure out “what is the main point that the author is making?”. You must think of an “umbrella term”, for all the important points that the author talks about within the text.

3. Say: In a little bit, we are going to use the about-point method on an article about dogs. Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen a dog or owned a dog. Where did you see it? What do you know about dogs? How do you choose which dog you want? The article that we will read will teach us about many fun facts that you may not have known before. You will have to read to find out more about these facts!

4. Say: First, we’ll talk about a new vocabulary word you will read in this article: retaliate. Retaliate means to make an attack in return for a similar attack. It is like a response. Sometimes we may use the word retaliate.For example, “They were about to retaliate by screaming back at her.” They were going to respond to someone’s attack towards them by screaming back. They were retaliating. Have you ever had a time when you had to retaliate? If so, tell me about it. Finish the sentence: I was about to retaliate when…”

5. Say: Here is a paragraph from the article:

Dogs have very good senses. They have an excellent sense of smell which has made dogs good at tracking as well as sniffing out illegal items like drugs or bombs. Some dogs are specifically bred to increase their sense of smell. Dogs also have an excellent field of vision allowing them to see almost in a complete circle.

This paragraph is about dogs. What are some of the important points the writer is trying to make? Dogs have good senses. They can smell very well, which helps them find illegal substances for the police. They can also see in a complete circle, which shows their great vision. Now I can put these together and make a topic sentence: Dogs have great senses, which includes their sense of smell which allows them to find illegal drugs and their vision.

6. Now I want you to try using about-point on a paragraph:

Dogs can be great pets for kids. The key is to train both the dog and the child. Kids must learn how to treat a dog so the dog will not retaliate. There are many expert trainers who can help you choose the right dog for your family as well as help train your dog and children how to behave.

What is this paragraph about? Yes, dogs being great pets. What are the main points that the author makes about this? That’s right! Dogs and children must be trained so that both will behave together. How could we combine all of these main points into one topic sentence: Dogs…? Dogs and children must be trained so they both will behave well together.

7. Now I want you to finish reading the article and use about-point to make topic sentences, one for each paragraph. By the time you are finished, you should have a good summary of the article. Now you will be able to remember the important facts about dogs. You want to shorten the article, only picking out the meaningful information. Remember to write it in your own words and we will have a quiz once everyone has finished writing.

Assessment: Collect each student’s summary of the article, and evaluate the summarization using the following checklist:

__ Collected important information

__ Ignored trivial and examples in summary.

__ Significantly reduced the text from the original

__ Sentences brought ideas together from each paragraph

__ Sentences organized coherently into essay form.

Quiz:

1. What is one of the most popular pets in the world?

2. What are some jobs that dogs perform?

3. What are some of the different characteristics and skills that make up dogs?

4. Which senses do dogs have that are very good?

5. How much better can a dog smell than a human?

6. What can make dogs very sick?

References:

Article: Animals for Kids, Dogs, http://www.ducksters.com/animals/dogs.php.

Greer, Avery. You OTTER Know How to Summarize. https://asg0025.wixsite.com/readinglessondesigns/reading-to-learn.

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