Running with Reading Comprehension!

Rationale: 

As readers become more fluent, another goal of reading well is reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is the ability to comprehend what the text is saying as well as the message that the text conveys. In order to achieve this goal, a reader can use summarization to understand the overall message of a text. Teaching the about-point method, which asks two important questions, 1) What is the text about? and 2) What is the main point the article is saying about that topic? It is helpful for readers to summarize the texts they read. In this lesson, students will learn to summarize a passage by highlighting and focusing on the important information while crossing out the irrelevant information and describing the text in a few sentences.

 

Materials: 

·     Poster with summarization steps

·     Marker and highlighter (for teacher) 

·     Highlighters (one for each student)

·     Notebook Paper 

·     Pencils (one for each student)

·     Copies of reading comprehension quiz for each student 

·     Individual printed copies of the National Geographic Kids article about  cheetahs.

 

Procedures: 

1.    Say: “Has anyone ever told a story to a friend? (allow students to raise hands).  Did you share every detail about what happened, or did you only focus on the most important parts of the story? Exactly! When we tell someone about something that we have read, we only need to tell them the important parts of the story they will need to know. This is what we call summarizing. Summarizing helps us communicate and share with others every day. We can also use summarizing to better understand what we read and show that you understand the story.”  

 

2.    Say: “When using summarizing, there are three rules that we must follow in order to summarize texts. The first rule is to mark out any information in the story that is not important. Second, highlight the important information and terms in the story. The third rule is to create a topic sentence based on the umbrella terms and the highlighted text. Now that we know these rules, we can use them for summarization.” 

 

3.    Say: “When we summarize a story, we only read a little bit of it at a time. After we are done reading each small part, we look back on it and determine what the most important parts of the story are. Remember, we cross out what we don’t need and highlight what is important which means we need to be very selective when highlighting.”

 

4.    Say: “Now I am going to show you how to summarize. We are going to read an article about cheetahs. Book talk: “In the article, we are given a lot of information about cheetahs and how they hunt! Let’s read the article to find out more about cheetahs! Do any of you know just how fast a cheetah is? (Let students raise their hands and answer). I am Agoing to read the first paragraph of the article and we will see if we can find out.” 

 

“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. 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.”

 

5.    Say: “Before we go over how to summarize this paragraph, let’s look at some words in this paragraph that might not be familiar to you. The first word is “mammal”. A mammal is an animal that breathes air, has a backbone, and grows hair at some point during its life. 

Why is this article talking about mammals? Because cheetahs are a type of mammal! The fastest mammal, actually! Another tricky word in the article would be “prey”. Prey is an animal that is being hunted by another animal for food. Cheetahs hunt their prey easily because of their speed! (Ask students to come up with a sentence that the word prey can be used in). Now that we have gone over some vocabulary in the text that might be unfamiliar, let’s summarize! 

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6.    In this first paragraph, there is a lot of useful information. I will now use a highlighter to highlight the important parts of this paragraph. I am first going to highlight “fastest mammal on land” since this is key information about cheetahs and how they move. Next, I would also highlight “a cheetah needs half an hour to catch its breath before it can eat.”

Don’t forget, we will also use a pencil to mark out any information that is not needed.

 

7.    Say: “Now that I have shown you how to summarize, let’s summarize the next paragraph together. 

“The cheetah's excellent eyesight helps it find prey during the day. The cheetah is hard to see becaus its spotted coat blends with the tall, dry grass of the plains. Suddenly, the cheetah makes a lightning dash. It knocks its prey to the ground and then bites its throat. Once found throughout Asia and Africa, cheetahs today are racing toward extinction. Loss of habitat and declining numbers of their prey combine to threaten the future of these cats. Cheetahs live and hunt mainly in open grasslands and bushy areas in parts of Africa and the Middle East.”

 

8.    Say: “Let’s highlight the most important parts of this paragraph and cross out the parts that are not. Do you think that “the cheetah makes a lightning dash is important”? (Allow students time to answer) I agree, I don’t think that part is very important either because we already know cheetahs are super fast. (Give students time to work with a partner to decide what are the important parts of the paragraph).” 

 

9.    Say: “Now that I have shown you and we have summarized together; you will continue to summarize this article on your own. I want each of you to read the rest of the article on cheetahs that I have printed for each of you. Once you are done reading, come to my desk and I will give you a Summarizing Checklist from me. This will help you write a summary of the article based on the highlighted information that you found. It is okay if your summary is short, because a summary is supposed to be a brief version of the article. When you are done with the checklist, share your written summary with a partner and discuss your similarities and differences. The last thing we will do is take a quiz!” 

 

Summary Checklist: 

Did I…. 

____ Highlight the important details 

____ Cross out what is not important 

____ Write my topic sentence 

____ Write a 3-5 sentence summary 

 

Assessment checklist: 

Did this student…. 

_____ Find and focus on important information 

_____ Reduce the article from the original 

_____ Create a topic sentence based on the highlighted information 

_____ Support their topic sentence with a short 3-5 sentence summary 

_____ Include key ideas in their summary 

 

Reading Comprehension Quiz: 

1.    What type of animal is a cheetah?

2.    Where do cheetahs live and hunt?

3.    What to cheetahs eat?

4.    Cheetahs are considered what kind of cats?

 

Reading Comprehension Answer Guide: 

1.    mammal

2.    grasslands

3.    small-medium animals

4.    big cats

 

Reference:

Article on cheetahs: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/cheetah/

Sanders, Grace.“Jumping into Summarization.” https://gms0035.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn

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