Swimming Into Summarization

Kendall Woody

Rationale: The goal of reading is for students to achieve reading comprehension. 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: 1) What is the text about? This is usually an easy question, and it identifies the topic that becomes the subject of the topic sentence. 2) 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 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 dolphin article
Pencil and paper for each student
Summarization checklist
Comprehension quiz (below)

Procedures:

Say “Raise your hand if you have ever read a book that you thought was so interesting that you wanted to tell someone about it. When you told them, did you only tell them the important parts of the book? If so, that is called summarization. Good readers do not try to remember everything, they use summarization strategies to remember only the important points the author is making about the topic.”
Say “Now that you are all becoming fluent readers, we need to learn a new skill to help with reading comprehension. The strategy we are going to be working on is summarization. The best way to summarize is called about-point. In about-point, you ask yourself an easy question, “What is the text about?” and a tough question, “What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?” To answer the tough question, you have to think of an umbrella term for all the important points the writer is telling you. When you have the answers to these questions, you use those answers to write a topic sentence.”
Say “Now that we know our key strategies for helping us summarize, we can begin to look at an article to practice summarizing. I am going to show you how I would do about-point with an article about dolphins that we are reading today. Have you ever seen a dolphin? How long do you think they can grow? Can they communicate with each other? These are some of the questions you will be learning to answer today.”
Say “In order to summarize and understand what we are reading, it is important to make sure we know what all the words in the passage mean. We are going to go over an important vocabulary word that you will see in the article that we are going to read today: mammal. Mammal means a warm-blooded vertebrate animal that breathes air, grows hair at some point in its life, and drinks milk from its mother when it is a baby. The word is used in the passage, “Very social and playful mammals, bottlenose dolphins form friendships that last decades hunting, mating and protecting each other.” Which of these is an example of a mammal? A human OR a lizard? The first one is correct because a human is a warm-blooded vertebrate animal and meets all the other qualifications to be a mammal. Now that we know what mammal means, can you see how it fits into the sentence?
Say “Here is a paragraph from the story:

Bottlenose dolphins are found in warm water all over the world. They live both in shallow water close to shore and far out in deep dark water. Dolphins face a lot of problems with getting trapped in thegarbage humans leave on the beach.

This paragraph is about dolphins, but what important points is the writer making? Dolphins live in warm water which can be shallow or deep. Humans leave trash on the beaches that end up in the water and sometimes trap the dolphins. Putting these points together, I can make a topic sentence: Dolphins are found in both shallow and deep water, and the garbage that humans leave on the beach sometimes traps the dolphins.”

Say “Now I want you to use about-point on a paragraph:

These sea mammals feed onfish, squid and shrimp. A group of dolphins will cooperate to make a mud ring to trap fish. Then, some of the dolphins in the group will wait outside the ring for the fish that try to escape, gulping them up as a snack.

What is this paragraph about? Right, dolphins. What are the main points the author is making about dolphins? Correct, they feed on fish, squid and shrimp. Another point is that the dolphins work together to trap the fish so they can eat them. How could we combine those ideas into a topic sentence? Right, dolphins feed on fish, squid and shrimp, and they work together to trap the fish.”

Now I would 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 dolphins. 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

___ Wrote a topic sentence for each paragraph

___ Significantly reduced the text from the original to form summary

___ Identified important points

___ Successfully conjoined the important points to form a topic sentence

Quiz:

What do dolphins use to locate objects?
Which of the five senses is very strong in dolphins?
How long can dolphins grow?
What kind of animals are dolphins?
How fast can dolphins swim?
What types of food do dolphins eat?
Where are dolphins found?

References:

Article:https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/bottlenose-dolphin/

Claire Payne, Swimming into Summarization https://claire3129.wixsite.com/mysite-1/reading-to-learn

Caroline Colley, Turtle-lly Awesome Summarization https://mcc0052.wixsite.com/mysite/reading-to-learn

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