Katie Smith's CTRD Webpage

Rationale: The ultimate goal of reading is comprehension. This lesson introduces students to a helpful strategy known as summarization, which will help them read to learn and understand the text. Students will learn to delete trivial information and redundant information in an article about the mystery of bees.

 

Materials: Class set of the article "Honeybee Mystery" by Kids National Geographic; poster with the rules of summarization written on it (included below); assessment chart for each student (for teacher use); colored marker for each student; lined paper for each student; projector

 

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? [Wait for responses]. 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 practice summarization let’s review what we have learned this week about bees. Earlier we discussed that bees have different roles inside the “bee family”. What were some of the roles? [Wait for responses]. Yes, the queen bee, the male drones, and the worker bees all have very important jobs inside of a bee hierarchy! Earlier this week we talked about the specific jobs that bees have. Who can tell me how other worker bees take care of the queen bee? [Wait for responses]. Very good, they act as a nurse, they attend to the queen and her needs, they clean the hive, they clean other bees, and they attend to other important duties around the hive. Do you think it would be easy to live like a bee? I don’t think so! It would be a lot of work, especially if you worked for the queen.

3. Say: I am so impressed that you all remembered that much about the bees. Keep up the good work! Now, let's talk more about summarization. Everybody take out a marker and a sheet of paper. Turn your paper horizontally, hot dog style, and divide it into three different columns. [Wait until all the students have drawn their columns]. Okay, now let's look at our "Rules of Summarizing" poster. Can someone read the first rule of summarizing? [Wait for responses]. 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. [Wait for students to write the rule]. 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. [Wait for students to write the rule]. 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. [Wait for students to write the rule]. Making a topic sentence can be very challenging because most texts don't have topic sentences incorporated. A topic sentence combines all 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 with an article called "Honey Bee Mystery." Bees have been buzzing about a lot during this season. According to this mystery article, they are disappearing, and nobody knows why! Let’s read the article to find out more about why the bees are disappearing. First, let's look at the first paragraph of the article together: "All across the United States, honeybees are flying away from their hives and dying. Empty hives are causing a lot of worry about some important food crops. Bees give us a lot more than delicious honey. They are pollinators—they enable plants to produce the fruits and nuts we enjoy by carrying pollen from one plant or flower to the next. The wind pollinates oats, corn, and wheat, but many other plants (like apple and cherry trees and melon vines) depend on insects, bats, and birds.”

5. Say: Everybody watch me as I use my rules to summarize this paragraph. [Pull out a pre-made copy of the 3 columns on paper]. Let's look at the first sentence: “All across the United States, honeybees are flying away from their hives and dying.” Is it important that the honeybees are dying around the United States? I do not think the location is important, so let’s write this under the first column and cross it out. [Wait for students to finish writing]. However, I do think that the second sentence is important. “Empty hives are causing a lot of worry about some important food crops.” This sentence explains what the paragraph is going to talk about, so I am going to write sentence number two under my second column of important information. [Wait for students to finish writing] I notice that both the second and third sentence talks about things that bees are good for, so I think that the third sentence is redundant and can be taken out. I’m going to write the third sentence down in my first column. [Wait for students to finish writing]. Let's look at the next part: “The wind pollinates oats, corn, and wheat, but many other plants (like apple and cherry trees and melon vines) depend on insects, bats, and birds." Okay, I see some repeated information here. I believe the most important part of this is that the wind pollinates some types of grown food, but there are other plants depend on other animals for pollination. Now I am going to write that information in the 2nd column because it is important information. [Wait for students to finish writing]. Now let’s mark an X over the rest of the paragraph and write it in the first column because I do not think it is important.

6. Say: Now that we have finished the first paragraph let’s try to create a topic sentence. Remember the topic sentence is one sentence that explains what the paragraph is talking about, so we only need to look at the second column for the important information. I have the following sentences: “Empty hives are causing a lot of worry about some important food crops,” and, “the wind pollinates oats, corn, and wheat, but many other plants (like apple and cherry trees and melon vines) depend on insects, bats, and birds." I would make this a topic sentence by saying: Empty beehives are causing a lot of worry for crops’ existence, because not all crops are pollinated by the wind: many are pollinated by insects, including bees. This sentence has all the important parts of the paragraph and is a good summary of the paragraph. Does anybody have any questions?

7. Say: Now I want you all to summarize the other paragraphs. Remember to write down important and non-important information in each column to help you create a topic sentence. Feel free to look at our summarizing poster if you need help. Create a topic sentence for each paragraph and when you have finished, staple the article to your paper with your columns, and turn it in to me.

 

Assessment: I will review each student's column chart to determine if they could successfully summarize the different paragraphs. I will use the assessment checklist below to record each child's grade. Topic sentences may vary slightly, but I will be looking to see if they child included the important information in each.

 

Comprehension Questions:

1. Other than honey, what do bees give us?

2. Why are bees so hard to study?

3. What are researchers saying about the decline of bee health?

 

Assessment Checklist:

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

2. Did the students 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 parts?

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

National Geographic. "HoneyBee Mystery” http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/honey-bee-mystery/

Woods, Carly. Summing Up the Buzz. https://sites.google.com/site/misswoods14/summing-up-the-buzz

 

 

 

Click here to return to the Entries index.