Rationale: Once students can read fluently, they need to be able
read for comprehension. A great way to learn how to read for
comprehension is by summarizing a story or an article. In this lesson,
students will learn to find the important information in a passage and
create a summary from it.
Pencil per students
highlighter per student
paper for each student
Black Bear Article overhead
Walrus Article copied for each student
A Red and Purple overhead marker
1. Say: Today we are going to talk about how to write a summary. A
summary is a brief statement that describes a longer article or story.
It talks about what the big idea of the passage is. When we write a
summary, we will only talk about the important things in the article.
We are going to practice finding the important ideas in a story and
getting rid of the describing details.
2. On the overhead, I have an article on black bears. This article is
about how baby black bears act with each other and their environment.
Their environment is their surroundings. I am going to read the whole
article through one time to make sure I understand the article. If
there are words I do not know, I am going to decode them and look them
up if I don’t know them. Once I know and understand the article, I am
going to start looking for my information. At this point, I would read
the whole article aloud for the class. Then I would underline the
important information in purple and the details in red.
3. Now that I know what the important information is, I am going to
write my summary. I will write sentences using this information. Here I
will model how to write a summary while asking the students for help.
4. It is your turn to write a summary. Each of you has a copy of the
Walrus Article. I want you to highlight the important information, or
the big ideas, and underline the details in pencil. On a piece of
paper, write a summary describing this article and then turn it into me
along with the article.
The students will turn in their article and summary. I can see what
information they decided was important and what was not. From that, I
can correct each individual as needed. Also, I can focus whole group
time on the areas in which the students who struggle the most in this
subject. I also will have the summary to grade. I will be able to see
if the students understand what a summary is and how to write them.
Again, I can use this information to correct both the individual and
Black Bear Article