Rationale: One of the most important reasons for teaching children how to read is comprehension. Knowing how to read is crucial in order for people to comprehend the world around them, and understanding what they are reading must occur in order happen. After students learn to read accurately and fluently, they can then move on to comprehension, or reading to learn. Summarization is a useful strategy that can be used to help with reading comprehension. This lesson is meant to help teach students to read to learn by using summarization. Summarizing includes deleting trivial or unhelpful and unnecessary information to zone in on the parts of the text that have more meaning and importance.

 

Materials:

Individual copies of an article written for kids on great white sharks (URL below).

Pencil and paper for each student.

Summarization checklist and comprehension quiz (below).  

                                     

Procedures:

1. Explain to children why summarization is important: When we read a text, we would spend all day trying to remember all the words and all the details. Good readers don’t try to remember everything. They use summarization strategies to remember only the important points the author is making about the topic. In that way, they reduce a text that may have hundreds or thousands of words to a compact gist that is easy to remember.

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2. The best way to summarize is to ask an easy question and a tough question, and you use your answers to make a topic sentence. The easy question is "What is the text about?" The tough question is "What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?" To answer this question, you have to think of an umbrella term for all the important points the writer is telling you.

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3. In a few minutes, I’m going to show you how to summarize with a paragraph about great white sharks, which is the article you are going to be reading today. Has anyone ever seen a shark in the wild or an aquarium? Who can give me some examples of the different types of shark? (students will most likely mention great whites) If they do not, ask if they have heard of great whites. If they do, say Yes! Today we are going to learn a bit about great whites.

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4. Let’s talk about an important vocabulary word you’ll be reading: predator. A predator is an organism that survives by attacking & eating other living organisms. Finish the sentence: The great white shark is a predator, because he…. Another word I want to draw your attention to is prey. Prey is an animal taken by a predator as food, or one that is helpless or unable to resist attack. In the article, we learned that the great white sharks mother sees her pups as prey, so they have to swim off on their own after they are born. When they become bigger the shark becomes a predator, what are some of the great white’s prey? Finish the sentence, “Great white sharks are predators who are ___ _____ _____ ___ ____ food chain.” (at the top of the)

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Here is a sentence from the story:

“Sharks count on the element of surprise as they hunt. When they see a seal at the surface of the water, sharks will often position themselves underneath the seal. Using their tails as propellers, they swim upward at a fast sprint, burst out of the water in a leap called a breach.”

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This sentence is about how sharks eat seals, but what does the author really want the reader to take away? That sharks use a master technique to surprise their prey. Sharks use their tails & the force of the water to rocket them up into the seals. I can make a topic sentence: Great white sharks eat many different animals; however, they use their tails as propellers to launch out of surface of the water to hunt their main prey, seals.

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6. Now I want you to practice on another sentence:

Sharks don't chew their food; they rip off chunks of meat and swallow them whole. They can last a month or two without another big meal.

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What is this sentence about? Yes, the great white sharks eating habits. What are the main points the author is making about great whites? Correct, they do not chew their food, they rip off big chunks and swallow them whole. Another point is, sharks only need to eat one big meal every month or two to survive. How could we combine these ideas to create another topic sentence? Sharks swallow their food whole and only need to eat big meals occasionally to survive.

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7. Now you are going to finish reading the article and use the questions we ask to help you make a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are finished, you will have made a good summary of the article, which will help you remember important facts about great white sharks. Don’t summarize examples or trivia; they are not the important parts of the article. You are writing a short version of the article in your own words, including only the important ideas to remember. And to make sure you remember, we will have a quiz after everyone finishes writing.

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Assessment: For the assessment, you will do two activities. First, you will have the students write a paragraph summarizing the article, using their topic sentences they created. To grade it use the rubric below to assess the student’s paragraph

 

__ Collected important information

__ Ignored trivia and examples in summary.

__ Significantly reduced the text from the original

__ Sentences brought ideas together from each paragraph

__ Sentences organized coherently into essay form.

 

In addition, I have prepared this quiz to give the students; multiple forms of assessments provide students with the opportunity to thrive if they have different strengths.

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Quiz:

What do great white sharks do when they are born?

What kinds of food do great white sharks eat?

What two body part helps great white sharks attack their prey?

What does it mean when a shark ‘breaches’ the water?

What type of animals might attack great white shark pups?

Where do the great white sharks live?

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References:

Murray, Bruce. The Reading Genie. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/

James, Emily. Sun Bears Love to Summarize. http://emjames77.wixsite.com/portfolio/reading-to-learn

Great White Shark, National Geographic Kids. https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/great-white-shark/#great-white-shark-swimming-blue.jpg