COACHED LESSON: SUMMARIZING Overview When a group of researchers analyzed studies in the use of strategies to determine which strategies resulted in the greatest gains in comprehension, summarizing was number one. In addition to enabling students to organize and recite information, summarizing is also a check on their understanding. Inability to summarize is a sign that comprehension is lacking and calls for a re-reading. Summarizing requires the ability to identify the main idea and supporting details. It also requires the ability to select the most important information, the ability to combine details, and the ability to paraphrase and condense. Objectives Students will use titles as an aid to predicting the main idea and supporting details of a passage. use a web to summarize. Prerequisite Skills As noted on pp. 326-328 of the text, the ability to summarize builds on the organizational strategy of determining main ideas and supporting details. The strategies being introduced here are using the title to predict the main idea of an article and using a graphic organizer to summarize. Introduction Introduce the skill of summarizing by relating it to common oral summaries. Ask students to tell about their favorite book or the most interesting thing that they learned in school this week. After students have told about their favorite book or most important thing they have learned, tell them that they have just summarized. Explain that summarizing is when you tell the main idea and most important details. Tell students that in addition to summarizing orally, we also summarize in writing. For example, they might be asked on a test to tell briefly what a story or article was about or to tell what happened to the main character. Or maybe they might be asked to write a summary of a book that they read. Explain, too, that they have read summaries. Locate and discuss the summaries provided at the end of textbook chapters and the blurbs on book jackets or recommended reading lists. Explain to students that summarizing is the most important reading and writing skill that they will learn. Before students can summarize, they need to know what a good summary is like. Provide examples of well-crafted summaries and the selection that was summarized. Help students discover what makes an effective summary. Ask: What do you notice about the summaries? What is in the first sentence of each summary? What comes next? How does the summary end?
Introduction of the Use of Graphic Organizers to Summarize One of the easiest ways to summarize is to use graphic organizers. Graphic organizers lend themselves to selecting and condensing the main idea and supporting details. Explain to students how a graphic organizer can be used to summarize a paragraph or larger article. Using the following (or a similar paragraph), think aloud as you summarize it in a graphic organizer. In your think-aloud, note how you use the title to predict what the paragraph is about and what you might find out about the topic. As you read through the paragraph, you might note that the main idea is that mobility assistance dogs help their owners in many ways. You might note all the ways in which they help but then combine like details. You might note that that the key things mobility assistance dogs do is to carry things, fetch objects, help their owners make their way, pull wheelchairs, and give their owners independence. Show how you would depict the main idea and supporting details in a web. Provide additional demonstrations as needed. Dog Helpers for People Who Have Disabilities Many dogs have been trained to guide people who can t see. Now dogs are being trained to help people who have difficulty walking or who can t walk at all. They also help people who have difficulty using their arms or hands. These dogs are known as mobility assistance dogs. Mobility means the ability to move around. Mobility assistance dogs help their owners in many ways. They can carry objects in back packs made for dogs. They can pick up objects that the owner drops or even fetch a book or TV remote for their owners or grab a soda from the refrigerator. They can turn light switches on and off, push elevator buttons, and push doors open. One small mobility assistance dog was trained to take clean clothes out of the dryer. Bigger mobility assistance dogs can even pull wheel chairs. But the best thing mobility assistance dogs do is to give their owners independence. As one assistance dog owner explained, Because of my dog, I don t feel disabled.
Guided Practice Once students have caught onto the idea of using graphic organizers to summarize, use the following and/or similar paragraphs to provide guided practice. As part of guided practice, work cooperatively with students to create graphic organizers. Discuss the title and what it suggests the main idea is and also have students predict what the paragraph might tell about the main idea.
Read the article and then summarize the article by filling in the web. A Good Deal for Dogs Being a mobility assistance dog is a good deal for dogs. A lot of the dogs chosen to be trained as helpers were once in shelters. Being an assistance dog has given them a home. They also get lots of praise and love from their owners. Their owners will give them lots of pats and will be saying things like, Good dog! and Thank you! Best of all they get a chance to help humans.
Read the article and then summarize the article by filling in the web. Raising Puppies to Become Mobility Assistance Dogs Most of the dogs chosen to be trained as mobility assistance dogs come from shelters. But a few are chosen when they are just puppies. Before the puppies can be trained to be assistance dogs, they have to be raised. That s where puppy raisers come in. Puppy raisers keep the puppy until it is a year old. They teach the puppy how to obey. The puppy is taught to follow the commands: sit, down, stay, come and heel. Heel means that the puppy has to walk at its owner s heels. It can t run ahead. A dog that won t obey can t be trained to be an assistance dog. Raisers teach the puppy how to get along with people. Dogs who are afraid of people or don t like people can t become assistance dogs. Raisers also help the puppy to get used to being in crowded places and noisy places. Assistance dogs have to get used to being on crowed sidewalks, in parks where other dogs are running around, and in malls, train stations, and airports. Without getting upset or distracted, assistance dogs have to be able to go anywhere their owners might want to go. An assistance dog wouldn t be of much help if it chased cats or was frightened by the noises of cars and buses.
Review Have students tell how graphic organizers can be used to summarize an article. Discuss the advantages of using a graphic organizer. Assessment Note students ability to highlight key differences and similarities. Collect and examine graphic organizers that they complete on their own. Note students ability to complete these graphic organizers. Extension Encourage the use of graphic organizers to summarize a variety of written pieces of gradually increasing complexity. Introduce other kinds of organizers, such as frames or sequence or process maps (see p 408-410 for a discussion of graphic organizers).