Watch Me Summarize, Watch Me Aye-Aye
Bridgett Davis
Rationale: Reading is the first step for students to learn new information. In order to become better readers, we must first understand what we are reading. One way we can do this, as beginning readers is to improve comprehension through summarization. Summarizing means to take all of the important details and big ideas out of a text and combine in to explain a story to someone who has never read it before. This lesson will help students learn how to find those main ideas and key details in a text by having the teacher model summarization and then the students will summarize themselves. The teacher will show the strategy of summarizing through explicit modeling on how to pick out key details, while deleting unimportant ones. Then, guiding students through summarizing their own passages. The students will be assessed on their summarization skills through comprehension questions that follow at the end.
Materials:
· Pencils
· Paper
· Highlighter
· Colored pencil to mark important details in the passage
· Dry-erase board, and dry-erase markers
· Classroom copies of full article “National Geographic for Kids: Aye-Aye;”
· Rubric for summarization
· Dictionary
Procedures:
1. Say: Today we are going to talk about summarization. Does anyone know what it means to summarize? (let a few students answer). Summarizing is when you take the most important details of a story and put it in your own words to explain to someone what happened. We don’t want this to be too long because otherwise we could just read the story, so we want to give a gist of what it is about. This means we will include: main ideas, important characters or character traits, mainly anything that is crucial to the story! When you summarize you are retelling the story without the little details that don’t change the plot. We use summarization with long books and articles so that you can break down a big ideas into something more simple and easier to understand and remember.
2. Say: I’ve given you an article from National Geographic about Aye-Ayes. Aye-Ayes are animals that are a cross between a raccoon and a rat, they resemble bats with their beady eyes and love to eat fruit! They have many other super cool facts that we are going to read about in this article I’ve given you. We are going to read the first few sentences together, and I’ll show you how to summarize. Then, I’m going to let you finish reading the article and summarize the rest on your own! We are going to put on our thinking caps as we read so that we can mark important ideas that we didn’t know about Aye-Ayes. Follow along with me as I read the first few sentences aloud.
(COPY OF FIRST PARAGRAPH)Crouching on a tree branch, a hairy animal that looks like a cross between a raccoon and a rat lifts a long finger and taps on the trunk. It’s not politely knocking to see who’s home. Instead it’s trying to locate hollow spots beneath the bark where insects live. (It can tell that it’s found a cavity by the sound of the tapping.) Once it detects a hollow, the animal rips away the bark with its teeth and gobbles up the bugs. This curious creature is known as an aye-aye.
3. Say: Okay, who can give me a brief summary of what you read? [Allow several students to give important ideas-summaries about what they read. Write down some of their summaries on the board.] Let’s take a look at my copy of this paragraph on the SmartBoard. Notice how I highlighted important details and crossed out details that were not important. That helps me keep facts straight and the main idea in mind. [Model sample on board.]
4. Explain: To review, the main topic or first sentence tells us what the paragraph will be about. Our first sentence talked about how aye-ayes are hairy creatures that crouch on tree branches, that are a cross between a raccoon and a rat.It’s important for us to know what they are a cross between so I highlighted that, and underlined that they crouch in trees because that’s possibly important but we can always go back and change it. We can go through and cross out any information that we don’t 100% need to understand what an Aye-Aye is. Some information is more helpful in helping you summarize more effectively. Now I’m going to give you all a chance to try this on your own. Remember that there’s not always a black and white, right or wrong answers, so just do your best!
(COPY OF FIRST PARAGRAPH) Crouching on a tree branch, a hairy animal that looks like a cross between a raccoon and a rat lifts a long finger and taps on the trunk. It’s not politely knocking to see who’s home. Instead it’s trying to locate hollow spots beneath the bark where insects live. (It can tell that it’s found a cavity by the sound of the tapping.) Once it detects a hollow, the animal rips away the bark with its teeth and gobbles up the bugs. This curious creature is known as an aye-aye.
5. Say:Let’s read more about our friends the Aye-Ayes. I am also giving you a colored pencil and a highlighter. As you read, highlight details that you think are important and contribute to the main idea of the story. Take the black colored pencil and cross out the details that you think are unimportant and do not contribute to the main idea of the story and underline in a different color ideas that could possibly be important. The main idea of this story is to give you more information on the Aye-Aye. There is a lot of information on the aye-ayes, so pick facts that are main ideas. For example, where they live, what they eat, how they survive, etc.
6. When you’ve finished reading and marking the story, I want you to summarize it in 6 sentences or less. Remember to only include main ideas and details. Don’t include any of the details that you crossed out, only the ones that you have highlighted. Write in complete sentences and use correct punctuation. The most important thing is not to copy the text just like it is but put it in your own words.
7. Say: Before you read, let’s go over a little vocabulary that you’ll see in the passage so you’ll know what it means. [Write these on the board as well, with an example sentence so students may reference back.]
Forage– when a person or animals searches widely for food or provisions. “The Indians would forage for food in the woods because they didn’t have Winn Dixie down the road.”
Say: Now I want you to come up with a sentence of your own using the word FORAGE. (allow time for students to create sentences and call on a few to read theirs.) Great!
Prey – an animal that is hunted and killed by another for food. “A rat is common prey for a snake because it is much smaller and very delicious to snakes!”
Say: Now I want you to come up with a sentence of your own using the word PREY. (allow time for students to create sentences and call on a few others to read theirs.) Perfect! You all really understand these vocabulary words. Both of these words relate to an animals food and how they find it.
8. Okay, now let’s get to reading and summarizing. [Allow 20-25 minutes for students to summarize.]
Assessment:
1. Why did scientists first assume that the Aye-Aye was rodent?
2. How does an Aye-Aye find its prey?
3. How do you think they came up with the name Aye-Aye?
4. Why do you think these animals are nocturnal? (allow dictionaries for them to look up this word)
Rubric:
Student clearly read article all the way through and used information from different paragraphs.
____ / 3
Student picked out information using methods taught in class.
_____ / 2
Student deleted unimportant details.
_____ / 1
Student wrote a short paragraph summarizing most important details from the article.
____ / 4
Total Points and comments:
______ / 10
References:
Aye-Aye article
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/aye-aye/#PHOTO%202-AYE-AYE%20HAND.jpg
Anna Hadawawy Bahme, Swimming Towards Summarization:
http://abahme14.wixsite.com/myeportfolio/reading-to-learn-design
Reading To Learn Design
