| Students in Grades 5 and 6 do not automatically know how to summarize the material that they read. This is one of the essential skills of the Language Arts curriculum at this level and one that students will need to use for the rest of their grade school and college years and even beyond. Teachers should spend a lot of time teaching and reinforcing this skill to ensure that all students understand how to summarize material and why they should do this.
Lesson Objective:
At the end of this lesson students will be able to write a summary of a paragraph that they read. The teacher should explain the objective to the students so that they know what they will be learning. By writing the objective on the chalkboard, overhead or chart paper and pointing this out to the students, they will be prepared for the lesson.
Materials:
A non-fiction paragraph
A critique of this paragraph
A paraphrase of this paragraph
A summary of the paragraph
Two other non-fiction paragraphsThe teacher should prepare a paragraph in advance, which can be completely original or copied from a non-fiction text. It is best to start with factual information to make it easier for the students to find the main idea and supporting points. In addition to preparing a summary of the paragraph, teachers should also prepare two incorrect documents. One of these should be a critique of the paragraph giving a personal opinion and another in which the material is simply restated in different words.
The teacher should also have two other paragraphs or longer pieces of text that the students can use to write their own summaries - first with a partner and second independently. They do not necessarily have to be copied on separate handouts for the students as they can be asked to turn to a specific page in one of their textbooks. However, all students should work on the same text for this exercise.
Length of lesson:
Two to three class periods or more will be needed to teach this lesson. While there may be students in the class who are already familiar with writing a summary, the majority of the class will need time to grasp the objective of the lesson. Teachers should not automatically assume that once students complete the assignments correctly following this lesson that no further instruction is needed. This is a topic that teachers may need to refer to time and time again throughout the school year.
Preparation:
Ask students if they can tell you what a summary is. Read a paragraph from a social studies or science text and ask for volunteers to give you the main points. In this way, you will have a good idea of which students already have a good grasp of the objective of the lesson and will be able to help other students if need be. If there are students who do know how to correctly summarize material, ask them what they look for in the text to get started and ask them to explain how to proceed.
Lesson:
Using an overhead or handouts, give students a non-fiction paragraph. Ask them to take a few minutes to read it silently and then read the paragraph aloud to them. Next show them three paragraphs about the text – a. an interpretive critique; b. the same paragraph rewritten in more simple words; c. a summary of the paragraph. Ask the students which one they think is actually a summary. Accept all responses asking the students why they made the choice they did. You could even have a tally of the choices.
A summary takes the main point of the text and then lists the supporting ideas for that point.Discuss each of the wrong answers explaining why they are not summaries. (Eg. Giving one’s own opinion, restating the ideas using one’s own words). Discuss the right answer listing the points of a summary that are found in this paragraph. Give the students another paragraph and working in pairs ask them to underline the main idea. Then have them list the ideas in the paragraph that support this main idea.
Discuss the summaries as a whole class group calling on volunteers to give answers. Delve into the paragraph by asking pertinent questions that would ellicit responses from the students as to the supporting ideas. This can be the starting point for a lively class discussion on how to take jot notes.
Evaluation:
Have the students write their own summary of a paragraph by using bullet points to give the supporting details once they identify the main idea. It is easier to teach them how to bulleted points for the ideas that support the main idea of the text. It is perfectly ok for them to use words and phrases for this exercise instead of writing full sentences in paragraph form. Another lesson can be used to teach them to put the words and phrases into full sentences.
Extension Activities:
Have students choose a topic on which they can carry out very basic research, either online or in the library. As them to summarize information that they find pertinent to their chose topic. This can be the start of a very basic research assignment in which the students wor ... |
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