Reading to Learn | Lesson Designs

Swimming into Summarization

By Bailey Nyberg

Rationale:

Summarization is one of the two most powerful strategies for comprehending text. An effective method of summarizing is called about-point, which asks two critical questions about the text: a) What is the text about? This is usually an easy question, and it identifies the topic that becomes the subject of the topic sentence. b) What is the main point the writer is making about that topic? This is a harder question. Since the author usually makes several points, the reader must “superordinate” the points, i.e., find an umbrella term that covers all the main points the author is making. The main point becomes the predicate of the topic sentence.

Materials:

- Individual copies of the Smithsonian Sharks article (URL Below)

- Pencil and paper for each student.

- Summarization checklist and comprehension quiz (below).

Procedures:

1. Explain to children why summarization is important: When we read a text, we would spend all day trying to remember all the words and all the details. Good readers don’t try to remember everything. They use summarization strategies to remember only the important points the author is making about the topic. In that way, they reduce a text that may have hundreds or thousands of words to a compact gist that is easy to remember. How can we summarize a text?

2. The best way to summarize is called about-point. In about-point, you ask yourself an easy question and a tough question, and you use your answers to make a topic sentence. The easy question is "What is the text about?" The tough question is "What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?" To answer this question, you must think of an umbrella term for all the important points the writer is telling you.

3. In a few minutes, I’m going to show you how I’d do about-point with a paragraph on sharks, which is the article you are going to be reading today. Have you ever seen a shark? Where do you find them? Are sharks big animals? How many species of sharks are there? These are some of the questions you will be learning to answer today.

4. Let’s talk about an important vocabulary word you’ll be reading: ecosystem. An ecosystem is a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment. Sharks live in an ocean ecosystem. For example, “Wherever they live, sharks play an important role in ocean ecosystems – especially the larger species that are more “scary” to people.

5. Here is a paragraph from the article:

Wherever they live, sharks play an important role in ocean ecosystems—especially the larger species that are more “scary” to people. Sharks and their relatives were the first vertebrate predators, and their prowess, honed over millions of years of evolution, allows them to hunt as top predators and keep ecosystems in balance.

This paragraph is about sharks and their relatives, but what important points is this writer making? Sharks play an important role in ocean ecosystems. Sharks and their relatives were the first vertebrate predators. Putting these points together, I can make a topic sentence: Sharks and their relatives were the first vertebrate predators, therefore making sharks play an important role in ocean ecosystems.

6. Now I want you to use about-point on a paragraph:

Sharks have six highly refined senses for both hunting and communication: vision, taste, smell, hearing, touch and electro-reception. These finely honed senses coupled with sleek, torpedo-shaped bodies make most sharks highly skilled hunters.

What’s this paragraph about? Yes, shark's senses What are the main points the author is making about the shark's senses. Correct, they have six highly refined senses for both hunting and communication: vision, taste, smell, hearing, touch, and electro-reception. Yes, another point is that these finely honed senses coupled with sleek, torpedo-shaped bodies make most sharks highly skilled hunters. How could we combine those ideas in one sentence beginning: Sharks...? Sharks have six highly refined senses and torpedo-shaped bodies that make sharks good for hunting and communication.

7. Now I’d like you to finish reading the article and use about-point to make a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are finished, you will have made a good summary of the article, which will help you remember important facts about sharks. Don’t summarize examples or trivia; they are written only to help you understand the main ideas. You are writing a short version of the article in your own words, including only the important ideas to remember. And to make sure you remember, we will have a quiz after everyone finishes writing.

Assessment: Collect each student’s summary of the article, and evaluate the summarization using the following checklist:

__ Collected important information

__ Ignored trivia and examples in summary.

__ Significantly reduced the text from the original

__ Sentences brought ideas together from each paragraph

__ Sentences organized coherently into essay form.

Quiz: