Shaking into Summarization

Mary Beth Moss

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rationale: Once students learn to read accurately and fluently, they must reach the next goal. This lesson focuses on summarization, a strategy to help a student read to learn. The lesson will help students learn to summarize by teaching reader to delete unimportant or repeated information to allow focus on the imperative parts of text. Summarizing is one of the most powerful strategies for comprehending text. Two very important questions to know is: what the text is about? And What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?

 

Materials:

• Individual copies of an article written for kids on Earthquakes on the National Geographic for Kids

• Pencil & Paper for each students

• Summarization checklist and comprehension quiz

 

Procedures:

• Say: Who can raise their hand and remind me what the word comprehension means. (Allow students to respond) Exactly, comprehension means to understand. Our main goal as we are reading is to be able to comprehend what we have read.

• Explain to students why summarizing is important. Say: When we read a text, it is important for us to remember certain details. We could spend all day trying to memorize every word and every detail. However, good readers don’t do that. Good readers use summarization to remember the most important point about the reading.

• One great way to summarize is called about-point. In about-point you need to ask yourself a hard question an easy question. Easy question: What is the text about? Hard question: What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?

• Does anyone know what an earthquake is? Good, An earthquake is sudden shake shaking of the ground that can sometimes cause great destruction as a result of movement. Today we are going to be reading about earthquakes in an article.

• In a few minutes, I’m going to show you how I would about-point with a paragraph on “Eartquakes” this is the article that we are going to be reading today. Have you ever been in an earthquake? What is deadliest natural disaster? How are most deaths caused? How many earthquakes are there ayear?

 Here is a paragraph from the article:

Earthquakes are the deadliest of all natural disasters. Most deaths are caused by collapsing buildings or fires. Several million earthquakes occur in the world each year. However, many of these are undetected because they occur in remote areas or are very weak. On average, there are 18 major earthquakes and one great earthquake each year.

 

Lets look at this together and try and about-point this paragraph. This paragraph is about earthquakes, but what important points is the writer trying to make? Earthquakes are the deadliest of natural disasters. Most deaths are caused by collapsing building or fires. I can many a topic sentence: Earthquakes are the deadliest natural disaster, because of all the collapsing building or fires. Great job! That is an very short put to the point summary of what was said all throughout the paragraph.

 

• Now I want you to use about-point on a paragraph:

 

The most recent major earthquake took place on the island of Haiti in the West Indies. The Haitian government reported that 230,000 people had died, 300,000 had been injured and one million made homeless

 

What is this paragraph about? Yes, earthquakes. What are the main points the author is making about earthquakes? Yes, that the most recent major earthquake was on the island of Haiti. Yes, 230,000 people had died and 300,000 were injured, and one million left homeless. How could we combine these ideas into one sentence? Any ideas? (Allow students to respond) The most recent major earthquake was in Haiti, killing 230,000 people, 300,000 injured, and one million left homeless.

• Now I want you to finish reading this article and use about-point to make up topic sentence about each paragraph. When you are done you have made a good summary of what the article is about. This will help you remember the main important facts about eachquakes.

 

Assessment: Collect each students summary of the article, and evaluate the summarization using this checklist:

1. Collected important information. _____

2. Ignored trivia and examples in summary. _____

3. Significantly reduced the text from the original. ____

4. Sentences brought ideas together from each paragraph. _____

5. Sentence organized coherently into essay form. _____

 

Quiz:

1. Are earthquakes the most deadly natural disaster?

2. What are most deaths are caused from during earthquakes?

3. About how many earthquakes are there per year?

4. What was the most recent major earthquake?

5. Earthquakes are most common near cracks called what?

 

Reference:

            http://mkg0017.wix.com/miss-gunter#!staff/c13dq

https://www.esa.int/esaKIDSen/SEMD1LXJD1E_Earth_0.html

 

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