Summarizing with Silly Squirrels
Rationale: Once fluency has been achieved, a reader can begin reading to comprehend. The goal of reading is reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is understanding the main point of a text and summarization is great for gaining comprehension. When students learn to summarize, they will be able to block out redundant information and focus on the most important information of a text. In this lesson, students will learn how to use their summarization skills to summarize an article written on squirrels.
Materials:
1. Class set of the National Geographic article, “Bald Eagle”
2. Class set of the National Geographic article, “Eastern Gray Squirrel”
3. Highlighters & Pencils
4. Bookmark with Summarization rules
5. Assessment worksheet for each student
6. Comprehension Checklist for teacher
Procedures:
1. Say: “Good morning class, today we are going to learn how to summarize an article! We can easily remember what we have read by summarizing. Summarizing means you pick out the most important details from a text to remember and share. Summarizing allows us to understand the main idea without redundant information. Let’s practice summarizing by reading two articles. The first article we will summarize together as a class, but the second article you will summarize on your own! The article we will do together is called “Bald Eagle” and it is an article about bald eagles from National Geographic. The article you will summarize amongst yourselves will be “Eastern Gray Squirrel” another article by National Geographic. We will pick out the main idea by eliminating details we do not need to know to understand the main idea of the text.”
2. Say: “The summarization rules are on these bookmarks I made for you all [pass out bookmarks]. You can look back on these bookmarks while you read to help you remember the rules of summarization!”
3. Say: “We will read the first article together; we will go back and delete any unnecessary information. Then we will highlight what is important and then write down the main idea. Let’s try with the following paragraph from the ‘Bald Eagle’ article:
‘Eagle nests are called aeries (AIR-ees). Bald eagles build their nests at the very top of tall trees so the eggs will be safe. Some parents come back year after year to the same nest, adding more sticks, twigs, and grass each time.’
“What parts of this paragraph is important? I think ‘Bald eagles build their nest at the very top of tall trees so their eggs will stay safe’ and ‘Some parents come back year after year to the same nest.’ I will highlight these parts of the paragraph and cross out the parts about eagles adding to their same nest and what their nests are scientifically called because we already have the fact that eagles come back to their nests and it is assumed they would add or rebuild their old nests. Now let’s put those two sentences together to make a topic sentence. Now that we have done those two steps, our third step is to create a topic sentence from the highlighted parts of those sentences, ‘Bald eagles build their nest at the very top of tall trees to keep their eggs safe and some parents come back year after year to their same nests.’
4. Say: “Remember summaries should be shorter than the article! Now I am going to hand out another article, ‘Eastern Gray Squirrel,’ [hand out copies and give a book talk]. How many of you have seen squirrels running around your yard? I bet all of you have! This next article is going to teach us many new facts about eastern gray squirrels. We will practice our summarization skills, so keep those bookmarks handy so you can create your own summary at the end of reading. Now you may begin reading on your own.”
5. [After students finish reading] Say: “Once you are done reading, I want you to go back and highlight some of the most important parts in the article [ask different students what they highlighted]. Now I want you to create a topic sentence by answering these questions: what is the article about and what is the main point? [Students respond]. You should now be able to write a summary using that information [walk around and help].”
6. Say: “Eastern gray squirrels forage for nuts, seeds, buds, and flowers of trees. Like other tree squirrels, the eastern gray squirrel plays an important role in what’s known as seed dispersal. As winter approaches, squirrels carry their food and bury it in several locations. They hide more food than they will recover or eat. The buried seeds and nuts sprout and begin to grow in these locations the following spring.”
“What parts of this paragraph did you think was important? [students respond with answers like from bald eagle article]. Great responses, everyone! You all did excellent on summarizing by creating a topic sentence from two sentences of the paragraph.”
7. Say: “The last thing we are going to do is an assessment on the article we just summarized. I will handout a worksheet that ask a few questions based from the article and I want you to write down what you think. Then I will pick up your worksheets and highlighted articles and review them to make sure we all know how to summarize now!”
Assessment:
1. How many species of squirrels are there?
2. Where have you seen an eastern gray squirrel?
3. What do squirrels play an important role in?
4. Why do eastern gray squirrels need a good sense of smell?
5. Why do they communicate with other squirrels by noises and body movements?
Comprehension Checklist:
1. ___ Focus on important information
2. ___ Delete unimportant information
3. ___ Use the information to create topic sentences
4. ___ Summary is short with main idea
References:
Graphic - https://www.123rf.com/photo_76955364_vector-set-amusing-cartoon-squirrels-in-clothes.html
National Geographic Article - https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/facts/bald-eagle
National Geographic Article - https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/facts/eastern-gray-squirrel
Analyzing the Alligator - https://sps0040.wixsite.com/website/reading-to-learn
Summarizing with Sea Otters - https://aed0060.wixsite.com/website/post/summarizing-with-sea-otters
Murray, Bruce (2012). Making Sight Words.
