RL Design | savannahmoseley

Summarizing with Sam the Sea Turtle

Reading to Learn

Savannah Moseley

Rationale:

Reading comprehension is the overall goal of reading which entails getting the overall message of a passage. To do this a reader can use summarization to get the message. In this lesson, students will learn to summarize a passage by highlighting the important information, crossing out the unnecessary information, and describing the passage in a few sentences.

Materials:

Poster with summarization steps

1. Leave out unimportant information.

2. Leave out repeated information.

3. Pick out important information.

4. Find an umbrella term.

5. Create a topic sentence.

Poster with paragraph 3 (from article) typed out in big font

Thick Sharpie poster marker & highlighter (for teacher)

Highlighters (one for each students)

Notebook Paper (two pages for each student)

Pencils (one for each student)

Individual copies of the National Geographic Kids article about sea turtles:

https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/green-sea-turtle/#green-sea-turtle-closeup-underwater.jpg

Summarization checklist (one for each student; see bottom of page)

Comprehension quiz (one for each student; see bottom of page)

Procedures:

1) Explain why summarization is important:

Say: “Good readers do not try to remember every detail they read, instead they summarize. Summarizing is how we take large sections of text and reduce them to the most important parts: the gist, the key ideas, the main points, and remembering. Good readers use this strategy to remember the most important points from the author.

2) Hang summarization poster on board & review summarization steps:

Say: “We have to do three things when we summarize:

· 1st: Cross out any unimportant or repeated information (or fluff) that isn’t essential to the message of the text.

· 2nd: Find and highlight the important information that is essential to the text.

· 3rd: Form a topic sentence from the important information you highlighted.”

3) Say: “I am going to show you how I do these steps to summarize with a paragraph on sea turtles which is the article that the entire class will read today.”

Booktalk:Whose favorite animal is a sea turtle? (waits for show of hands). Do you know what family the sea turtle belongs to? Does anyone know what they eat, or why their shell is so important? You will know the answers to these questions by the end of today.

4) Teach class about important vocabulary in the passage:

Say: “Understanding important vocabulary in the passage is very important for reading comprehension. Together, we are going to go over a few words that you will see while reading the article on sea turtles.” [For each word: explain the word in simple language, model how to use the word (What does it mean? What doesn’t it mean?), provide sample questions using the word, and scaffold by making a sentence using the word for students to complete.]

WORDS: repellent, entangle, insulating, extinction

Example:Say: “Extinction is one of the words in your passage so let’s look at what it means. It means: the process of a species disappearing. A species of animals would be heading towards extinction if there were only a few animals of that species left. A species of animals would not be heading towards extinction if one animal of a certain species died. Which of these is an example of extinction? One dog of a certain species died, or multiple dogs of a certain species died and there were only a few of them left.

5) (Hang poster with paragraph 3 on it beside poster with summarization rules. Teacher needs thick sharpie and highlighter. Pass out the sea turtle article to each student along with highlighter and pencil.)

Say: “This is a paragraph from our article. I am going to show you how I summarize this paragraph. You can follow along and do it with me on your paper. Let’s go back over the summarization steps:

· 1ststep: Cross out any unimportant or repeated information (or fluff) that isn’t essential to the message of the text.

· 2ndstep: Find and highlight the important information that is essential to the text.

· 3rdstep: Form a topic sentence from the important information you highlighted.

First, I need to cross out any unimportant or repeated information. I can cross out sentence 3 because sentence 3 isn’t important to the main idea of the paragraph. Next, I need to highlight the important information. I think that sentence 1 and 2 are important to the paragraph so I am going to highlight both sentences.

“Green sea turtles spend most of their lives underwater, where they can rest for up to five hours at a time before coming up for air. When active, they typically alternate between being underwater for a few minutes and coming up to the surface to breathe air for a few seconds. Green sea turtles are also known to sunbathe on land.”

The last thing that I need to do is form a topic sentence from what I have highlighted. (Write topic sentence below the paragraph on poster so students can see): Sea turtles come to the surface to breathe air every few minutes but live underwater.

6) Students summarize:

Say:“It is your turn to try! It is now time for you to use the summarization rules we discussed.”

“Unlike most other sea turtles, adult green sea turtles eat a primarily plant-based diet consisting of seaweed and sea grass. Scientists believe these green foods give the sea turtle’s fat its green color. The shell of the green sea turtle is usually shades of a brown or olive color.”

Say:“What information is not important so we can cross it out? (waits on answers from students) Yes, we can cross out the last sentence. So, what are we left with? (waits on answers from students) Right, we are left with the first and second sentence. Let’s read these two sentences and see if we can combine them into one sentence to create a topic sentence: Sea turtles primarily eat seaweed and sea grass which makes the fat of the turtle a green color.

7) Students write own topic sentence: (pass out two pieces of paper to each student for them to write their topic sentences on)

Say: “I would like for all of you to finish reading the article and use our summarizing rules to make a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are finished, you will have a good summary of the article. This will help you remember important facts about sea turtles. Remember to not summarize the unimportant or repeated information. When you summarize you are writing a short version of the article in your own words while including only the important information. When everyone is finished with their topic sentences, we will have a short quiz.”

8) Assessment:(Collect each student’s summary of the article and evaluate the summarization using the following checklist)

· Collected important information

· Ignored trivia and examples in summary

· Significantly reduced the text from the original

· Sentence brought ideas together from each paragraph

· Sentences organized coherently into essay form

9) Quiz: (Pass out a quiz to each student)

1) How much do sea turtles weigh?

2) What do sea turtles nest along?

3) Where do sea turtles spend most of their lives?

4) What do sea turtles eat?

5) How long do sea turtles live for?