Reading to Learn Lesson Design
By: Madeline Manifould
Rationale: Comprehension is the main goal of reading. We must teach students strategies to comprehend what they are reading. There are many strategies to make comprehension easier and summarization is one of the main strategies. Summarizing is a skill that must be taught to students through teacher modeling. This lesson will teach students how to summarize an article by learning the three necessary steps of the summarization process which are deleting information that is not important or is repeated, highlighting the important and necessary details by using key words or headings, and finding a topic sentence that covers the main idea and if there is not a topic sentence make one.
1. Highlighter for each student
2. Overhead transparency of National Geographic Article: “Hammerhead Sharks”
This shark's unusual name comes from the unusual shape of its head, an amazing piece of anatomy built to maximize the fish's ability to find its favorite meal: stingrays. A hammerhead shark uses its wide head to trap stingrays by pinning them to the seafloor. The shark's eye placement, on each end of its very wide head, allows it to scan more area more quickly than other sharks can.
The hammerhead also has special sensors across its head that helps it scan for food in the ocean. Living creatures' bodies give off electrical signals, which are picked up by sensors on the prowling hammerhead. The shark hunts alone, and can find stingrays that hide under the sand on the seafloor. Hammerheads also eat bony fishes, crabs, squid, lobsters, and other sea creatures.
There are nine species of hammerhead sharks. The great hammerhead is the largest, and typically measures about 13 feet (four meters) long and weighs about 500 pounds (227 kilograms). Great hammerheads live in most warm ocean waters throughout the world.
3. Printed copy of National Geographic Article: “Hammerhead Sharks” for each student
4. Lined paper for each student
5. Summarizing Poster with three main points:
Delete information that is not important or is repeated.
Highlight the important and necessary details by using key words or headings.
Find a topic sentence that covers the main idea and if there is not a topic sentence make one.
6. Assessment Checklist
___ ___ Picked out the important information
___ ___ Deleted the unimportant details
___ ___ Wrote a sentence(s) summarizing the most important information
___ ___ Captured the main idea of the text
1. Say: “As a class, we have been learning strategies and techniques that will help us as expert readers. Today we are going to learn about a technique called summarizing. Does anybody know what summarizing is? (Allow students to discuss). Summarizing is taking out all of the unimportant facts and recording the main ideas in an article or text. Summarizing is a great way to help us understand and remember what we read.”
2. Say: “Now we are going to look at the rules for summarization.” Show the poster (listed under materials) to the students and read the rules out loud. “We are going to summarize an article. To summarize, we will cut out the unimportant information and pick out the main points that readers need to understand the article. Then, we will write a sentence that covers the main points from the article.”
3. Say: Now, let's read the article “Hammerhead Sharks” and I will model for you how to summarize this article. Before we read the article, we need to talk about some vocabulary from the article that we many not understand. The word prey is one that I am not familiar with. Does anybody know what this word might mean? (Allow students to discuss the vocabulary word and use their prior knowledge to talk about what this word might mean. Help students construct a definition of the vocabulary word and write theis definition on the board. Repeat this process with the words anatomy and stingray). Now that we have identified some new vocabulary words, we are going to read the article “Hammerhead Sharks”.
Book Talk: Hammerhead sharks are a fierce and aggressive type of shark. They have a unique shaped head that they use to hunt the sea. Let's read this article to find out more about hammerhead sharks!
4. Display the hammerhead shark article on the overhead and pass out a copy of the article to each student. Say: Let's look at the first paragraph together. Follow along as I read aloud, “This shark's unusual name comes from the unusual shape of its head, an amazing piece of anatomy built to maximize the fish's ability to find its favorite meal: stingrays. A hammerhead shark uses its wide head to trap stingrays by pinning them to the seafloor. The shark's eye placement, on each end of its very wide head, allows it to scan more area more quickly than other sharks can.”
5. Say: Now let's look at the steps on our summarization poster. First, we need to get rid of unneeded details. Then, we need to select the most important details from the text and make a list of these details. As I am reading, I can tell that this article is about how hammerhead sharks use their unusual heads to hunt. Therefore, I am going to underline details that support this main idea and cross out the details that don't really matter. For example, when it is talking about stingrays, I can delete this fact because I know this article is about hammerhead sharks. As I go through and underline the important details about sharks and hunting here are the details that I underline:
a. Shark's unusual head helps it hunt stingrays
b. Uses its wide head to trap stingrays on the seafloor
c. Eyes on sides of head help it scan ocean
Now, I am going to take this information and make a one-sentence summary. “Hammerhead sharks use their wide heads and unusual eye placement to hunt down prey, including stingrays.” Do you see how I summarized this paragraph? Does anybody have any questions? Instead of rewriting the entire paragraph, I wrote one sentence that told me all of the important details from the paragraph on hammerhead sharks.
6. Say: Why don't you all try the next paragraph. Read the paragraph silently to yourselves. Mark out any information that is not needed and highlight the important information. Once you have finished, try to summarize the paragraph into one-sentence. (Give the students time to read and highlight.)
7. Ask the students, “what did you highlight as important details? What information did you choose to cross out? Who has a sentence that they think would summarize this information?” Give students an opportunity to share their answers. Work with the students as a class to create a good summary. Write this summary on the board and talk about why it is a good summary (no trivial information, main idea captured, condense).
8. Now, on your own I want you to read the next paragraph (paragraph 3) of our article and create a one sentence summary using the strategies that we have talked about. Remember to highlight the important information and cross out the unimportant parts. Write your summary on a sheet of paper. Turn in your summary and the highlighted article copy to me when you finish.
Assessment: I will assess the students summaries using the summary checklist listed above. I will also assess their comprehension by asking them the following three comprehension questions.
1. Where do Hammerhead Sharks get their name from?
2. How do Hammerhead Sharks use their unique shape to catch their prey?
3. How is a Great Hammerhead different from other species of Hammerhead
3. How is a Great Hammerhead different from other species of Hammerhead sharks?
4. Would it be safe for you to get into the water with a Hammerhead Shark? Why or why not?
Gluckman, Amanda “Long Story Short”
Davee, Lauren “Diving with Dolphins into Summarization”
National Geographic Article: “Hammerhead Sharks”
Return to the Awakenings index