Summarize through the Stars
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Emma Billingsley
Rationale: Reading is one of the most vital tools a child can have throughout their education. To truly comprehend long texts, students need to practice the powerful and effective strategy we call summarization. To summarize is to locate and extract important details and main ideas from the text and combine them into a memorable explanation that covers everything the writer is saying. This is important for recalling the main ideas of passages. This lesson helps to teach students how to pick out and find the important information in a text, summarization of the text, and then demonstrate their understanding of the text. This lesson will be taught by an instructor that will show how to use summarization by modeling how to find the important information and take out the irrelevant points. Students will be assessed on their summarization skills after summarizing their own texts through comprehension questions.
Materials:
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Article “Milky Way Galaxy” by NAtional Geographic Kids (one copy per student)
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Highlighters for students
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Pencils for students
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Paper for students
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Assessment Summary Checklist for each student (for teacher use)
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Comprehension questions
Procedures:
1. Say: “Today we are going to learn about summarization. Does anybody know what summarization means?” Allow students a few seconds to answer. Give the definition in your own words then, Say: “we are going to learn about finding the main idea of the texts”. This is the process of taking out information that is not useful so we can make a summarization. When we summarize, we can leave out unimportant details that do not really matter in the text. Today we are going to practice summarizing with an article about the stars in our galaxy.”
2. Say: “Let’s learn the steps of summarizing that will help us with our text. Take out a piece of paper and write down the steps so you can look at them when you need to.” Write the steps on the board. Read them as you write them. “First, we need to mark out unimportant information that is not repeated in the text. Next, we need to find and highlight important information. You can spot the important ideas by looking for facts that relate to the topic of the text you are reading. Lastly, we need to form a topic sentence from the important information.”
*“Now remember that your summarization should always be shorter than the actual text.”*
3. Pass out Super Cute Mammal Rediscovered and say: Now I’m going to model how to use the these steps to summarize text.
For example: “Light at the galaxy’s center takes 25,000 light-years to travel from Earth. (A light-year is the distance light travels in one year.) So that means if you could see the core of the Milky Way, you’d be observing light that possibly left Earth before humans first settled in North America.
At the center of the Milky Way is one of the strangest and deadliest things in the universe: a black hole. Black holes are born when a giant star runs out of energy. The star implodes, causing an explosion called a supernova. The star’s heart collapses under its own weight. It’s squashed into a tiny dot you can’t see.”
First, we need to mark out unimportant information. So I would ask myself what unnecessary information do I see? Well this passage never talks about humans in North America again so I know this information is unnecessary and that I need to mark out “before humans first settled in North America” I can also mark out “it’s squashed into a tiny dot you can’t see” Next, we need to find and highlight important information. So what important facts do I see about the Milky Way? Well I know that the passage keeps mentioning light years and black holes, so I can highlight “Black holes are born when a giant star runs out of energy”. What else from the passage tells me about how black holes are formed? Right! I need to highlight, “The star implodes, causing an explosion called a Supernova.” Now I need to form a topic sentence from the important information. I am going to use my highlighted information to form my topic sentence. My topic sentence might say something like this: “A black hole is formed when a star implodes from running out of energy, this explosion is called a supernova.”
4. Say: Now that you understand the steps to summarizing text let’s practice them by reading another article titled “The Sun”. But before we dive into the text let’s review the vocabulary words galaxy, star , and planets, and solar system.
5. To review the vocabulary explain what it means using a student-friendly definition,, model how to use it in a sentence, ask sample questions for using the word, and scaffold the students in making a sentence with the word. Example: “Our first word is ‘galaxy.’ Galaxy means a system of planets and stars. An example is, “I look through my telescope and see the galaxy we live in.” Now you get a chance to make a sentence using the word. “The Earth and stars we look at are in the Milky Way…” (let students answer).
6. Now have students practice summarizing by reading the article The Sun. Give every student a copy and then give an engaging book talk. Say: This article is about the big star we see everyday that gives us light and nutrients for our crops and our life. We all see the sun each day, but how hot is that big star in the sky? We’ll have to read to find out! Remember your vocabulary words for this article are: galaxy, star, planets, and solar systems. While you are reading the article remember to highlight the important information, and cross out the unimportant information. After each paragraph, write a summary sentence asking yourself the questions: What’s the big idea? What’s the point?”
Assessment: When students are finished collect their sentences and grade using this checklist:
___ Marked out unimportant or repeated information? Y/N
___ Highlighted important information? Y/N
___ Reduced text to a few words or phrases? Y/N
___ Wrote a simple topic sentence summarizing the article? Y/N
___ Used critical thinking and accurate resources to answer comprehension questions from the article? Y/N
Ask students these comprehension questions:
o What is the center of our solar system?
o How hot is the Sun, in Farenheit?
o What keeps the planets and from spinning into space?
o When do scientists think the Sun will run out of gas?
References
National Geographic Kids. “Milky Way Galaxy”
https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/explore/space/milky-way/
National Geographic Kids. "The Sun"