Melissa Murphree

Rationale: The ultimate goal of reading is to develop comprehension skills. This lesson is meant to introduce students to a helpful strategy known as summarization. By learning how to summarize, students will be able to mentally delete redundant and trivial information and focus on the most important information. In this lesson, students will use these summarization strategies to read, learn, and understand an article about cheetahs.

Materials:

            -      Class set of the article “Cheetah” by Kids National Geographic

            -      Poster containing summarization rules (delete trivial or unimportant information, find the important                                     information, create a topic sentence if one is not already presented)

            -      Marker for each student

            -      Paper for each student

            -      Whiteboard

            -      Assessment chart for each student (filled out by teacher)

Procedures: 

1. Say: “Raise your hand if you have ever read an article or a book and told a friend about the reading? Do you read them the whole book, or do you just tell them the important parts of what you read? (Call on student). Yes! You only tell them important parts of the story! This is called a summary of the book or article. Summarization is a very helpful strategy good readers use to help comprehend or understand what they are reading. If you can summarize a book or article, it is a good indication that you are able to understand what you’ve read.”

2. Say: “Before we begin reading today’s article, can anyone tell me what they already know about cheetahs? (Call on students). We know that they are a type of animal. We also know that they are very fast. I think I would like to learn a little more about this animal.” (Write on whiteboard as students come up with already known facts).

3. Say: “Now, let's talk more about summarization. Everybody take out a marker and a sheet of paper. Turn your paper horizontal, like a hot dog, and divide it into three different columns. Okay, now let's look at our "Rules of Summarizing" poster. Can someone read the first rule of summarizing? Yes, the first rule of summarizing is to delete the trivia, or unimportant information. We don’t want to keep any repeated information. Everybody write this rule at the top of the first column on your piece of paper. It is very useful to cross out important information if you can mark on the article you are reading, but if you are reading a book you will probably have to make a mental note that certain parts may not be as important as others. This will help you to understand the message the author is trying to tell you. Now look at the second rule. The second rule is to find the important information. Everybody write this rule at the top of the second column. When you find something that is important in the book or article you are reading, underline or highlight the sentence so that you can go back and remember that it must be important. The final rule of summarization is to make a topic sentence. Everybody write this rule at the top of the third column on your paper. Making a topic sentence can be very challenging because most texts don't have topic sentences incorporated. A topic sentence combines all of the important information in a short, condensed way so that you are able to summarize and comprehend the paragraph you read.

4. Say: “Now we are going to practice summarizing. I am going to pass out a copy of an article about cheetahs. We have already discussed some facts that we already knew about this animal, so there may be some information in this article that you already know. However, I want you to read through this article anyway and see if you can learn even more.”

“Cheetahs grow to be about 6-8 feet in length and can weigh anywhere between 77-143 pounds.

Cheetahs can reach up to 60 or even 70 miles an hour when they are chasing their prey, but after a chase, a cheetah needs half an hour to catch its breath before it can eat. 

Cheetahs are found throughout Asia and Africa, but they are starting to become extinct due to loss of habitat and declining numbers of their prey.”

5. Say: “Before we begin to summarize, it is important that we understand the vocabulary used throughout this article. Does anyone know what the word prey means? (Wait for students to respond). Right, prey is an animal that is hunter by another animal as food. A good example sentence would be ‘The cheetah chased its prey through the grass.’ What about the world habitat? A habitat is the natural home or environment of an animal. For example, ‘A cheetah’s habitat is open grassland or bushy areas.’ It is important that we recognize and understand all of the vocabulary in a story before we can start to summarize.”

6. Say: “Now that we have examined some new vocabulary we are ready to summarize. Let’s look at the first paragraph together. I’ll start with the first sentence: Fastest mammal on land, the cheetah can reach speeds of 60 or perhaps even 70 miles (97 or 113 kilometers) an hour over short distances. Do you think it is important that we know about how fast cheetahs run? If we were telling someone who didn’t know anything about cheetahs, I think it would be important that they know how fast cheetahs run because that is what they are known for. I don’t think that we necessarily would have to tell them that they run 97 or 113 kilometers. To me, this information seems a little redundant. Since the goal of summarizing is to eliminate redundant and unimportant information, I wouldn’t include this particular information in my summary. Now let’s move on to the second and third sentence: It usually chases its prey at only about half that speed, however. After a chase, a cheetah needs half an hour to catch its breath before it can eat. Use your summarization rules to take a closer look at this sentence. First, let’s delete the trivial or unimportant information. I do not think it would be important to know how fast cheetahs chase their prey because we already know that they run very fast, so we could delete that sentence. I do think it is important to know that cheetahs need half an hour to catch their breath after chasing prey. Now, what is our third rule? We need to make a topic sentence for this paragraph. Based on the information we underline and deleted in the first three sentences, does anyone have any ideas for a topic sentence for this paragraph? (Allow several students to give their ideas and give feedback based on answers.) I think my topic sentence might be something like, ‘Cheetahs run so fast that they need time to catch their breathe before eating their prey.’

7. Say: “Now that we have finished summarizing the first paragraph together, I am going to let you work on summarizing the second two paragraphs. Remember to use your summarization rules to delete unimportant information, highlight important information, and form a topic sentence. You will need to use your piece of paper with the rules listed in columns to organize your summary. On the back of your paper, please write a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are done, you may turn your papers in at the front of the classroom.”

Assessment: I will review each student’s column chart and topic sentence to determine if they have a good grasp on comprehension and summary. I will use the assessment checklist to record each child’s score. Although answers may vary, the checklist will help me to be sure to check for specific elements of accurately summarizing articles or short stores. I have also added some questions below that can be used to check for comprehension. 

Comprehension Questions:

1. How fast does a cheetah run?

2. Where do cheetahs live?

3. What kind of animals do cheetahs eat?

Assessment Checklist:

Student Name __________________________________________

1.  Did the student fill out the chart on his/her paper?

2. Did the student come up with topic sentences for the remaining paragraphs?

3. Did the student successfully delete unimportant/redundant information?

4.  Did the student successfully identify important words and/or phrases?

5.  Did the student use the important information to come up with a topic sentence?

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