Splashing with Summarization!

Reading to Learn

Rationale:

When it comes to a student’s reading development, comprehension is such a crucial component. When a student is fully able to comprehend a text, they don’t have to take the time to decode words. They are able to fully focus on the text and understand the message that it communicates. A good way to test students’ reading comprehension is to get them to summarize a book that they have read. In this lesson, students will practice summarization as a reading comprehension strategy. Students will accomplish this strategy by picking out important information from a text and eliminating unnecessary details or redundant words or sentences. Students will also practice superordination by finding an umbrella term for all the events that occur in the text. This will help them with their summarization. Students will use these steps: find and highlight important information, find an umbrella term for the events in the text, find and mark out repeated or unnecessary information, and form summarizing topic sentences from the important information found in the text. After modeling and practicing take place, the students will be able to summarize any article they read.

Materials:

Pencil and highlighter for every student
Large poster will the summarization steps on it
Blank sheet of paper for each student
One copy of “The Water Cycle!” for every student
White board
Projector
Comprehension Questions that are written on the board
Assessment Checklist for every student (completed by teacher)

Procedures:

Say: Have you ever read a great story and wanted to tell someone about it, but you didn’t want to read the whole book to them? What happened? You could only told them about the important parts of the story right? Well, there is a name for when we do this, and it is called summarization. It is extremely helpful to summarize something that you’ve read when you don’t want to share the whole thing. It allows someone else to get a brief version of a main idea about something important that you read and comprehended. Summarization is also a strategy that helps readers to understand what they have just read. Today, we will read an article about water and practice giving summaries. [Hand out blank sheets of paper to each student]
Say: As we get started, I want to go over the three basic steps that we will use while we are summarizing. [Point to poster.] First, we will pick out any information that we think is important. Important information will be the main ideas of the article. We will come up with a term, or word(s), that briefly describes these main ideas in the text. Second, we will mark out the information with our pencils that we do not think is important to the main ideas of the article. We will also mark out repeated information because we do not need to include it in our summaries twice. These first two steps will help us choose what information to include in our summaries. It will also keep us from writing too much. Third, we will write topic sentences that summarize all of the important information that we find in the article.
Say: Before we splash with summarization, we need to go over how to figure out the meaning of a tough word that you will come across in the article. Does anyone know what the word “evaporate” means? [Wait for responses.] Good! When talking about the water cycle, evaporate means to disappear or dry up. You may have noticed that the rain that collects on the ground and will disappear. That is because it evaporates. Is it possible for the concrete sidewalk outside to evaporate? [Wait for responses.] No! That’s silly to think about because it can’t happen! With that in mind, complete the following sentence out loud as a class. After it rains, the sun will come out, and the puddles will _____________. [Let students respond.] As you read the article, you may run into a few more tough words. Try to figure out what they are with your reading skills. If you still get stuck, then raise your hand, and I will come and help!
Say: The article that we will read today is about the water cycle. Can anyone raise their hand and tell me what they already know about the water cycle? [Give the students wait time and record their answers on the board.] Here’s a little fact for you: water can be a solid, a liquid, or a gas in the water cycle! There are ice glaciers around the world that made up of frozen water, and there is water in its liquid form in every pond, stream, lake, river, or ocean. There is also water vapor in the air around us. How do you think water is able to change forms in the water cycle? We will have to read see what happens!
Say: I will help you summarize the first section after we read it together. Then, you will do the rest by yourselves. Let’s take a look at it. [Put the article up on the projector. Read the first section out loud and have the students follow along on their own copy.] “Pour yourself a glass of water and take a sip. Did you know that the water you’ve just swallowed is the same water that wooly mammoths, King Tutankhamun and the first humans drank? That’s because Earth has been recycling water for over 4 billion years! The world’s water moves between lakes, rivers, oceans, the atmosphere and the land in an ongoing cycle called – you guessed it! – the water cycle. As it goes through this continuous system, it can be a liquid (water), a gas (vapor) or a solid (ice). So, are all you budding young geographers ready to learn some splashing new facts? Then join NG KiDS as we take a look at the different stages of the wonderful water cycle…” Now that we have read the first section, we will go back and follow our summarization steps. Let’s pick out the important information that we just read in this section by highlighting it with our highlighters. Then, we can create a term to describe the main idea of this paragraph. Let’s also get rid of repeated or unimportant information that we do not need to know. The first sentence says, “Pour yourself a glass of water and take a sip.” Do you think that sentence tells us anything important about water? [Wait for responses.] No, it doesn’t. We can cross that sentence out because it is not important. It doesn’t talk about the water cycle. We can also cross out the next two sentences because they don’t tell us anything that we should include in our summaries either. Let’s move on. I think I spotted some important information in this next sentence! It says, “The world’s water moves between lakes, rivers, oceans, the atmosphere and the land in an ongoing cycle called – you guessed it! – the water cycle.” That sentence is important because it is information about the water cycle, and the main ideas of this article are about the water cycle. What about the next sentence? It says, “As it goes through this continuous system, it can be a liquid (water), a gas (vapor) or a solid (ice).” [Wait for students to respond.] You are right. You should highlight it because it is important too! Let’s keeping reading. “So, are all you budding young geographers ready to learn some splashing new facts? Then join NG KiDS as we take a look at the different stages of the wonderful water cycle…” Do those two sentences tell us anything about the water cycle? [Wait for responses.] No, they don’t. Cross those out. We have read that section once through without stopping, and we have gone back to determine which information is important to the main idea of the article. Let’s come up with a term that can describe the main idea behind this whole section of the text. What do you think a good term would be for this section? [Wait for responses.] Good! “The water cycle” is a great term to use to describe what this whole section of the text is about. Now, we can write a sentence on the board that summarizes the first section based on our umbrella term and the two sentences that we think are important. I am going to summarize these two sentences by stating, “Water is all around us in the water cycle, and it exists in three different forms.” [Write sentence on the board for an example.] Before you work on your own, let’s try one more section together. This time, I want you as a class to tell me on what I should do to summarize the next section. If you all get stuck, I’ll help you and give you a few hints to help!
Say: Now that we have practiced together, it is your turn to try it on your own. Read through the rest of the article silently and write a one sentence summary on the main idea of each section in the article. Don’t forget to highlight important information and cross out sentences that are not important or contain repeated information. Then, you can write your summarizing sentence about the main idea(s) in each section. I know you all will make a splash with summarization! If you need my help, raise your hand and I will come and help you!
As each student finishes and turns in their work, hand them a sheet with comprehension questions on it. Use the checklist below to assess the student’s summarization work from the article.

Comprehension Questions:

Name one place where water is found. (answer: in the air, on land, in rivers, lakes, oceans, streams, or ponds)
What causes the water on the earth to evaporate? (answer: energy/heat from the sun)
Why does precipitation fall to the ground? (answer: the clouds become too big and heavy for the air to hold them)
Is all water collected the same way? (answer: no, it depends on where it lands)
What are the two different things that can happen to the water, or precipitation, that reaches land directly? (answer: It will either flow directly into rivers, oceans, or lakes, or it will soak into the soil before finding its way to a body of water.)

Resources:

“The Water Cycle!” (National Geographic Kids) https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/science/nature/water-cycle/

Make a Splash with Summarization! https://cch0063.wixsite.com/reading/reading-to-learn

Summarizing Strategies https://bookunitsteacher.com/wp/?p=751