Recycling for Summarization
Rationale
As students become more fluent readers, they should begin to work on their comprehension skills. As decoding time decreases for students, time spent on comprehension can increase. Summarization is an important element in reading comprehension because remembering everything in a text is nearly impossible, so students need to be able to summarize the most important information. One way to summarize is using the about point method. During this lesson, the teacher models summarizing a text and provides students with the opportunity to summarize what they are reading. They will also have the opportunity to answer questions about key details in the text. When a student is able to summarize a text, they capture the meaning of the article and are better equipped to answer questions about the text they read.
Materials
2. Provide students with iPads/Laptops to read article – article has a feature to click on unknown words for a definition
3. Paper
4. Pencils
5. Projector
6. Printed out comprehension quiz
Procedures
1. Have any of you ever had to explain what is happening in an article after you read it? Was it difficult to remember all of the details? Today we are going to learn some ways to make that easier! We are going to learn something called summarization. Summarization is the ability to say in a few words or sentences what a whole article or book is about. We are going to learn how to summarize with an article from DOGOnews.
2. First, we are going to look at some important vocabulary. The word I want us to look at is ‘versatile’. If something is versatile, it is able to adapt to fit many different functions. Versatile does not mean that something changes itself like shape shifting. It means that the same object can be used in many different ways. As an example sentence: This piece of fabric is versatile because I can use it as a blanket, a cape, or make a tent out of it. Finish this sentence for me: Plastic is versatile because it can be used as a packaging for fruit or… [possible options include: a soda bottle, snack wrapper, etc.]. Can someone tell me some other things that are versatile? [allow students to answer]
3. Who has ever bought something that is packaged in plastic? Did you know that plastic can take up to 1000 years to decompose in a landfill? How could we help save our planet in regards to plastic usage? [Allow students to think critically and respond] We are going to read this article about a grocery store in Denmark that made a whole section of the store plastic-free. Let’s read about this and see how we can help make our planet cleaner.
4. Now, we will read the article on our iPads, so that we can use the technology that this website offers. I want everyone to read at their desks quietly to themselves. If you come across a word that you don’t understand, you can click on the word and a definition will come up. Why do you think it is important to read quietly to ourselves? Silent reading is important because it allows us to read at our own pace. We can read over the trivial details, but we can also take time to focus on key important details as well.
5. There is a lot of information in this article, so we can’t remember every single word and sentence that we just read. It is important when we summarize to only pick out the most important information and leave out any unnecessary information. An example of a detail that is unnecessary, or trivial, is that there are 700 products available in plastic-free packaging. Although this is an interesting fact, it is not vital to the main idea of the passage. What we want to focus on is the most important information, for example, like that this store has an isle that is completely plastic-free.
6. To help us learn to summarize, we will read the first paragraph together and summarize it together, then you will do the next paragraph on your own. Let’s read the first paragraph together… Who can summarize what happened? [Allow a couple of students to try.] Let’s look at this together on the board. [Pull up article to project on the screen.]
Though the harmful effects of plastic on wildlife and human health are well-documented, the versatile material is hard to avoid. Nearly everything we touch, from grocery bags to drink bottles to food packaging, contains plastic. Now, Amsterdam’s Ekoplaza supermarket is making it a little easier for consumers to reduce consumption of single-use bags and containers, which are clogging our landfills at alarming rates, with a dedicated plastic-free aisle. Believed to be the world’s first, it features 700 products, including rice, beans, yogurt, chocolate milk, cereal, snacks, and even meat.
7. See how I have underlined the most important information? Now I will use this information to summarize the paragraph in my own words like this: We use plastic in a lot of different ways. However, an Amsterdam supermarket created a plastic-free grocery aisle, so that consumers can use less plastic.
8. Summarization Assessment: Now, I would like for y’all to read the rest of the article and create a summarization in your own words on your piece of notebook paper. [Students need paper and pencil] Remember to leave out the trivial details and only include the most important parts of the article. Also we don’t want to repeat information, so concentrate on being concise, meaning to the point, but make sure you don’t leave out anything important at the same time.
Rubric for Summarization: Did the student…
o Delete trivial information
o Delete repeated information
o Include the most important details of the text
9. Comprehension Assessment: After you have summarized the article, we will take a comprehension quiz.
Quiz:
· Why did the supermarket want to make a plastic-free aisle?
· What do customers have to do to participate in the plastic-free aisle shopping?
· How can consumers be part of the change to help keep the Earth clean?
References
Swimming like Sharks into Summarization, Sarah Hausler, http://sdh0017.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn
Find other lessons here: http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/applications/