Ms. Muller's Class
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"Summarizing With Skunks"
Reading to Learn Lesson Design
Rationale: The goal of reading is to be able to understand the message of the text. Once students are able to read fluently, they are able to focus their mental resources on comprehension. It is important for readers to understand what they are reading and one of the strategies for comprehension is summarization. Summarization is one of the most effective strategies for reading comprehension because it requires readers to reduce a large text into a concise message. In this lesson, students will read an expository text and summarize it, excluding trivial details. Teachers will check for understanding by having students answer comprehension questions.
Materials:
Pencils, paper, highlighter, “Why are skunks black and white?” article for each student, grading rubric for summaries
Procedures:
1. Say: Today we are going to learn how to summarize. Now that we are fluent readers, we are going to focus on understanding the text and we are going to do this through summarization. Summarizing is when you shrink down the text by only stating the most important points. We are going to practice this by reading an article. We will try to pick out the main points and leave out the unimportant details or examples.
2. Say: We are going to learn some rules for summarization. Everyone take a sheet of paper. We are going to fold the paper into four parts by folding it in half hot dog style and then in half again. We are going to use this to remember the steps for making a summary. In the top fold we are going to put “Pick out the most important information by highlighting or underlining it.” The next step is “Delete unimportant and repeated information.” The final step is to “Organize the important information into one statement.” For the last section of the page, we are going to put additional information about summarizing, such as summaries should be shorter than the text.
3. Say: Now I am going to pass out the article we are going to read. This article is about skunks. Skunks are known for their stinky smell but they also are known for their coloring. Have you ever wondered why a skunk is back with a white stripe down its back? We are going to read to find out.
4. Say: Before we read the article, it is important to know how to look at the vocabulary. For example, let’s look at the word musk. Musk means a substance that comes from an animal with a strong smell. Musk is used when talking about the smell of animals. It is not used when talking about the smell that comes from something other than an animal, such as the smell of food. Let’s look at how musk is used in the sentence: “These owls also have special membranes that slide across and protect their eyes from a skunk’s burning liquid musk.” Would musk be used to describe the smell of a male deer or the smell of a perfume? Yes, it would be used to describe a deer.
5. Say: Now we are going to look at the article. Let’s read the first paragraph together. {Guide class in recitation.) Now we are going to summarize the first paragraph. What is this paragraph about? The title usually gives us a hint. (Call on students). Good! It’s about the coloring of certain types of animals. We can take out the unimportant information, such as the part about skunks being stink or critters being “fashionably modest” and focus on the main point that animals are certain colors in order to survive. Now we have to make a statement sentence to condense this information. For example, we can say, “Animals have specific colored fur for their survival.” This summarizes the first paragraph. Now you are going to read the whole article, which focuses on the coloring of skunks.
6. Say: Now you are going to summarize the article. Use the study tool we made earlier to remember the steps. For the first step, use your highlighter to highlight important pieces of information. For the second step, mark out anything that you think isn’t important to the main idea. Then, make your summarizing statement about the main idea.
7. Say: On a sheet of paper, write a summary of the article. Use your statement as the topic sentence and support it with important details. Do not include information that is not necessary to your understanding of the article.
8. Say: Once you’ve written the summary, write any vocabulary words that are new to you that you learned in the article. Write a possible meaning for the word. Possible vocabulary words: membranes, foul, modest
9. 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…
1. Remove trivial information? YES/NO
2. Write a topic statement? YES/NO
3. Write 3-5 sentences with information supporting the main idea? YES/NO
4. Choose the correct main topic for this article? YES/NO
5. List vocabulary words and their own definitions? YES/NO
I will also ask the students a series of comprehension questions to see if they had a good understanding of the article?
1. Do skunks have to blend in with their surroundings or hide? No
2. Why are skunks black and white? They stand out in order to warn predators against attacking them.
3. How do skunks defend themselves? They spray a foul-smelling liquid and the oil can sting predators.
4. What animal is not scared away by the skunk’s smell? The great horned owl
Resources:
Discovery Kids. “Why are skunks black and white?” http://discoverykids.com/articles/why-are-skunks-black-and-white/
Snow, Kate. “Summarizing with Spiders.” http://kss0017.wixsite.com/katesnow/reading-to-learn-lesson
