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Reading to Learn (RL)

Updated: Apr 20, 2021

Summarizing with Salamanders


Rationale:

Summarization is what helps us make sure we understand what we are reading. It is a strategy that is used by asking questions to students such as “What do you think is happening in this story” or “Well can you tell me what the story is about?”. Comprehension is a strategy used to measure how fully our students are understanding the stories they read. This will help students learn to develop their summarization skills and understand what they are supposed to do when summarizing.


Materials:

o Pencil

o Paper

o Highlighter

o Summarization checklist

o Individual copies of article about salamanders


Procedures:

1. Say, “Today we are going to talk about when you get to remember all of the important parts of a book that you love! This is called summarization! Raise your hand if you think you could summarize your favorite book.” Let the students interact.


2. Say, “Now that we are all getting very good at reading we need to make sure that we can remember the things we are reading. This skill will help us to be able to tell our friends about the things we read and learn more from it. The way we can best summarize is by using a strategy called about-point. When we’re doing about-point the best way to do it is to ask ourselves, ‘what is the text about?’ The other thing we really need to know is, ‘what is the main point of the story’. The best way you can answer this question is to think about the important parts of the story that the writer wants you to know. Once you are done finding the answers you can make a topic sentence out of them.”


3. Say, “Today to practice our summarizing skills we are going to read an article about salamanders. Who knows what a salamander is? [take some student’s answers] Does anyone have a pet salamander? In our article we will find out some cool stuff about salamanders like how long they usually are, where they live, and how long it takes for them to go from an egg to larvae, which is the young form of an insect, to an adult salamander.

4. Say, “There are some words we need to talk about before we try to read our article. Have you guys ever heard the word debris? [take answers from students] I bet you have, it’s like all of the trash people throw on the highway, or when things are left scattered around somewhere it’s called debris. In the article the sentence the you’ll find it in is, ‘During the day they stay quietly hidden under rocks, leaf debris, and logs,’ do you think a person’s clothes they leave on the floor are debris? Or maybe all the trash at the dumpster? [Let the students say what they think] Yes exactly the trash at the dumpster not the clothes you leave at home!”


5. Pass out the articles to the students and say, “This is a paragraph from the story:

‘Spotted salamanders' favorite habitat is forests near rivers and streams. When it's the salamander looking for a tasty meal, it goes after such prey as insects, worms, slugs, spiders, and millipedes.’

This paragraph talks about where Salamanders live but what else does it talk about? Salamanders like to leave near forests. They live by rivers or streams, so water and it tells us what they like to eat. In order to make our topic sentence, now that we know what the passage is talking about and what the main points are we can put that all together into one sentence like this, ‘Salamanders like to live near the forest and bodies of water and they enjoy eating small prey’ this is how we summarize our paragraph into one topic sentence.



6. Say, “Now I want you to use about-point on this paragraph:

‘Though these bluish-black salamanders are large—about seven inches (18 centimeters) long—and distinctly marked with bright yellow or orange spots, they're still not easy to find. They're active only at night. During the day they stay quietly hidden under rocks, leaf debris, and logs. They also use other animals' burrows as their daytime hideouts.’

What is this paragraph about? What are the main points the author is trying to get us to take away from reading this?[Let students answer] Yes, that the salamanders have bright yellow and orange spots but are kind of hard to find. Why are they so hard to find? [Allow students to answer] Great job, because they only come out at night. So to turn this into our topic sentence what would we put? Exactly, Salamanders have bright spots but are hard to find because they only come out at night.”


7. Lastly, say “Would you please finish reading the article using about-point to summarize the article and make a topic sentence for every paragraph. You need to highlight the important parts to go back and look at after you read each paragraph and are trying to remember what needs to go in your topic sentence. After you are done when you put them together they will be a great summary of the article which helps us remember what we just read, right? We are going to have a small quiz once everyone is done with their summaries.”


Summary Rubric:

____ Student highlighted important sentences (Y/N)

____ Student did not highlight entire paragraphs (Y/N)

____Student created a topic sentence for each paragraph (Y/N)

____Student put the sentences (more than one) together to create a summary (Y/N)

____Student chose main ideas from the story to include (Y/N)


Comprehension Quiz:

1. What color spots do Salamanders have?

2. Do Salamanders like to like next to rivers and streams or pools?

3. What kinds of insects do Salamanders eat?

4.. How long does it take for a Salamander to hatch out of their egg?

5. How do Salamanders deter predators?

6. Why do Salamanders live close to the water?


Resources:

Spotted Salamanders



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