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Soaring into learning from reading!

A Reading to Learn Lesson Design

By: Emma Ayers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Rationale: After students learn to read fluently there is still more to learn. Once students have learned to read fluently they can begin to work on reading for comprehension. When students learn to read for comprehension they are able to use information from texts to learn. This is an important skill for students to gain so that they can continue to pursue their education. Reading comprehension can be learned through a variety of methods, so this lesson will focus on one method rather than looking at all of the different ways these skills can be attained. We will be looking at summarizing. Summarization teaches students how to focus on the main points of a text and how to use a graphic organizer.

 

Materials: Pencil (1 for each student), Paper (1 for each student), Highlighter (1 for each student), White board, Dry Erase Marker, Sheet of blank paper (for summarizing rules), Reading Binder (for each student), Sheet of lined paper (for summarizing articles), Copies of the article “Oceans” (class set + one for teacher) Avery Hurt – published by National Geographic Kids, Copies of the article “Taking Flight with the Wright Brothers” text adapted from “Wings of Change, The Birdmen and National Geographic Concise History of Science & Invention: An Illustrated Timeline”, grading rubric, and overhead camera.

 

Procedures:

1. Say: Okay, class today we will be learning a new reading strategy. Because we are all fluent readers we are going to be working with a new skill that can help us gain reading comprehension. The strategy we are going to be working on is summarization. Summarizing helps us take one big article and look at the important facts, rather than the whole text. We are going to look at two articles so that we understand the main points of the articles. As we summarize we are going to be focusing on the main idea, looking at facts that support this idea, and what information we can take out.

2. Say: Before we begin we need to learn some rules for summarization. We are going to use our piece of white paper to write these rules down. As I write each rule down on the board I want you to copy each one of the rules on to your paper. Once you have written these rules down you can place them on the front of your reading binder, so that you can remember them while we look at the articles.

3. Say: Our first step in summarizing is deleting trivia, which is information that is not important to the main idea of the article. So as we read the articles you can cross out small facts that might not be important. Once we have deleted the unimportant information I want you to highlight the information that is important for our understanding of the main point. Lastly, we will make a thesis (or topic sentence) that states the main point of the topic.

4. Say: The main idea of the article will be supported by all the details in the article. Now that we have gone over these steps I want you to write them down on your piece of lined paper. (steps will be written on the board for reference) Now that we know our key strategies for helping us summarize we can begin to look at an article to practice summarizing.

   1. I will pass out the article (“Taking Flight with the Wright Brothers) and give a book talk.

5. Say: Book talk à I want you to raise your hand if you have ever been on a plane before. *students raise their hands* Even if you haven’t been on a plane I’m sure that you know what a plane looks like. Well not too long ago there was a time when planes didn’t exist. So today we are going to read about the Wright brothers who created the first airplane. Okay as we begin let’s delete some information that is not very important. It says that the brothers grew up in “Dayton, Ohio”, but I don’t think that is important information for us to know, so you can cross through it. Next we need to look at the information that is important for our understanding of the main idea. In the article it says “The brothers never lost their love of flying”. I think this would be helpful to understand the main idea so let’s highlight it. It will be helpful for us to know the main idea as we create our topic sentences. Each of us needs to create a topic sentence that helps us understand the main idea, so that we can create good summaries of the article. For example, your topic sentence might say, “The Wright brothers love of flying lead to the invention of the first airplane”. Now that you have this example I want you to create your own topic sentence and summary. (I will walk around to observe their work).

   1. Next I will pass out the article “Oceans” by Avery Hurt

6. Say: : Book talk à Did you know that over 70 percent of the earth is covered by the ocean? Which means there is far more ocean in the earth than land, that’s pretty crazy isn’t it? (we will wait a few seconds for everyone to find their place in the article) Okay, now we are going to read the first two paragraphs of this article together and practice summarizing them. While we are doing this we will also be looking at some new vocabulary words. Make note of the words that you do not know because you will need to write your own vocabulary words in your independent summary of the text. While we go through the article make sure you are highlighting important information and crossing out the information that is unhelpful. After each paragraph, write a summary sentence that highlights the main idea of that paragraph. You can use these questions to guide your summaries: What’s it about? What’s the point? (After the students finish reading the second paragraph, we will stop and go over what a good summary for these paragraphs would be by showing it on the overhead camera)

7. Say: In this paragraph we learned that oceans are large bodies of water that fill basins in the earth. The water that fills oceans is salty. There are five oceans that scientists have labeled in the world. Oceans are typically around 2 miles deep; however, they can vary in their depth.

8. Say: Basin is a good vocabulary word for us to take a closer look at. We are going to use basin as our example vocabulary word, so that you learn how to use context clues when defining unknown words in the future. I can tell from the paragraph that it must be a hole of some sort because it says that, “oceans fill enormous basins in the Earth’s surface”. A basin can also be described as a valley in the earth’s surface. A basin is a large hollow area that can be filled with water. What might be another example of a basin that you may see? Good job, a lake may also be considered a body of water that fills a basin. Have you ever gone swimming in a basin (like a lake or an ocean)?

9. Say: The first step in our summarization is to look for the main idea in this paragraph. This can usually be found by looking at the title of the article, or is supported by all of the facts presented in the article. (wait for students to share what they think the main point of the article is) Right! This article is sharing all about the ocean and its function in our world. The information in this article helps us to learn more about the ocean, but it is not necessarily the most important thing for us to understand. Now that we know that we can look at the most important part of the sentence. Your sentence should look like this (show on overhead camera) à The main idea is that the ocean is a crucial part of our world and serves many purposes in it’s function. On lined paper I would like you to summarize the main idea of this article.

10. Say: We are going to continue to point out important facts in each section of this article. Now that we have practiced this together, I want you to continue to work individually on this task. I want you to pick out some important facts and highlight important facts, while crossing out unimportant details. Now I will come around and look at your work.

11. Say: You guys are doing awesome! I love the way that you are pointing out the main ideas and supporting details by highlighting them. Once you have found the most important facts you can start to summarize the article in a one paragraph response. After you do this I would like you to write five new words you have learned from this article and their definitions based on the context of the article. If you are confused feel free to pop a hand and ask me about them.

 

Assessment: Students will be assessed at the end of the lesson based on their abilities to summarize the text for the correct information. Along with the following reading comprehension questions:

___ Student underlined important ideas.

___ Did not underline trivia.

___ Summary used 1 + complete sentences.

___ Identified topic accurately.

___ Included key details.

___ Omitted trivia.

___ Captured main idea of text.

 

1. Who invented the first airplane and what were some of the qualities of these men that lead to their invention?

2) Because the ocean is so vast, what do you think is the most important function for the ocean in our ecosystem?

3) We also got to learn about some interesting sea creatures, what kind of sea creature do you think represents your personality, and why?

 

 

Reference:

 

National Geographic Kids. Hurt, Avery. “Ocean Habitat” https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/nature/habitats/ocean/#coral-reef-fish.jpg

 

National Geographic Kids. (text adapted from) Klesius, Michael. “Taking Flight with the Wright Brothers” https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/history/wright-brothers/

Busy Bees Flying into Summarization by Ashleigh Bonovitch. http://bonovitcha.wixsite.com/designs/reading-to-learn