Reading to Learn

Surprise! Let’s Summarize!

By: Caroline Dean

Rationale: To read fluently means you have mastered the goal of correctly comprehending texts. One of the most important skills to show full comprehension of a text is summarization. A method that helps us do that is the about-point method. The reader must ask two questions from the text. The first question is: what is the text about? This is usually an easier question and becomes the subject of the sentence. The second question is: what is the main point the author is trying to make about the topic? This is the more difficult one because the students must “subordinate” the points. This means they will find an umbrella term that identifies all of the main points the author is writing. This answer will then become the predicate of the topic sentence. With these two questions and their answers, the readers can then create a topic sentence from their text. Students will learn how to summarize their text by using the about-point method after reading an article.

Materials:

copies of the Animals for Kids text
pencils
paper
summarization checklist for the teacher
comprehension checklist

Procedures:

1. Say: “Summarizing is when we can remember important points the author makes after we read a text. It can be hard for us to remember all of the story, so we will use summarization strategies to help us remember some important points. As we learn summarization, we will read a text and then be able to reduce the text into just a few sentences making it easier to remember what the text was about.”

2. Say: “One of the best ways to summarize is called about-point strategy. Using this strategy, each reader will ask themselves two questions: What is the text about? What is the main point the writer is trying to make? You must think of an ‘umbrella term’ for the second question. An umbrella term is a way to combine all of the important points that the author talks about within the text.”

3. Say: “In a little bit, we are going to use the about-point method on an article about dogs. Raise your hand if you’ve ever seen a dog or owned a dog. Where did you see it? What do you know about dogs? How do you choose which dog you want? The article that we will read will teach us all about dogs - maybe even some facts you have never learned before! You will have to read to find out more about these facts.” [Pass out the article to each student]

4. Say: “Before we get started, we’ll talk about a new vocabulary word you will read in this article. The vocabulary word is retaliate. Retaliate means to make an attack in return for a similar attack. To retaliate means to respond. Let’s look at this word in a sentence. ‘They were about to retaliate by screaming back at her.’ They were going to respond to someone’s attack towards them by screaming back. They were retaliating. Have you ever had a time when you had to retaliate? If so, I want you to tell me about it. Raise your hand to finish the sentence: ‘I was about to retaliate when…’”

5. Say: “Here is a paragraph from the article:

“Dogs have very good senses. They have an excellent sense of smell which has made dogs good at tracking as well as sniffing out illegal items like drugs or bombs. Some dogs are specifically bred to increase their sense of smell. Dogs also have an excellent field of vision allowing them to see almost in a complete circle.”

This paragraph is about dogs. What are some of the important points the writer is trying to make? Dogs have good senses. They can smell very well, which helps them find illegal substances for the police. They can also see in a complete circle, which shows how great their vision is. When I combine these ideas, I can make a topic sentence: ‘Dogs have great senses, which includes their vision and sense of smell, which allows them to find illegal drugs.’”

6. Say: “Now I want you to try using the about-point strategy on a paragraph:

“Dogs can be great pets for kids. The key is to train both the dog and the child. Kids must learn how to treat a dog so the dog will not retaliate. There are many expert trainers who can help you choose the right dog for your family as well as help train your dog and children how to behave.”

What is this paragraph about? Yes, dogs being great pets. What are the main points that the author makes about this? You’re right! Dogs and children must be trained so that they can behave together. Class, how could we combine all of these main points into one topic sentence [wait for a response]. Yes, that’s great! Dogs and children must be trained to both behave well together.”

7. Say: “Now I want you to finish reading the article and use the about-point strategy to make your own topic sentences, one for each paragraph. When you are finished, you should have a good summary of the article. Now you will be able to remember the important facts about dogs. Remember, you want to shorten the article which means you only need to pick out meaningful information. Remember to write it in your own words and we will have a quiz once everyone has finished writing.”

Assessment: Collect each student’s summary of the article, and evaluate the summarization using the following checklist:

__ Contains important information

__ Ignored trivial and examples from the article

__ Reduced the text from the original

__ Contained an idea from each paragraph

__ Organized Summary into a paragraph

Quiz:

1. What is one of the most popular pets in the world?

2. What are some jobs that dogs perform?

3. What are some of the different characteristics and skills that make up dogs?

4. Which senses do dogs have that are very good?

5. How much better can a dog smell than a human?