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Green Sea Turtles and Bottlenose Dolphins? Oh, I Sea.

Reading to Learn

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Landry Foster

giphy dolphin.gif

Rationale:

In order to become expert readers, we need to comprehend the information we are reading. Summarization is a strategy that helps readers grasp the meaning of a text. Summarization is the process the reader takes to highlight the main ideas and important details of a text. As they highlight key details in the text, they will be able to construct a summary of the information they have read. This recalling skill allows readers to spend less time on decoding and more time on understanding. This lesson is designed to instruct students on the process of summarizing a text (using a highlighter to mark important details) to be able to gain reading comprehension. The teacher will model summarization steps and guide students in deleting unnecessary information to find the important parts of the reading. Students will learn the skill of superordination, the heart of summarization. Superordination means finding a key umbrella term that can cover events that happen in a text. Students will practice summarization as well as developing their reading comprehension skills in reading short passages. Students will be assessed using the summarization checklist.

 

Materials:

  • Summarization rules anchor chart

  1. Leave out unimportant information

  2. Leave out repeated information

  3. Choose important information

  4. Create the topic sentence

  • Paper

  • Pencils

  • Highlighters

  • Green Sea Turtles” printed articles for each student

  • Bottlenose Dolphin” printed articles for each student

  • Summarization Checklist Rubric

  • Article at the front of the classroom (on Projector)

  • Comprehension questions (written on the board)

    • Bottlenose Dolphins

      • What does echolocation tell dolphins? What do they use their whistle for? How do dolphins hunt for fish? Where are bottlenose dolphins found?

    • Green Sea Turtles

      • How big do they grow? What do they eat? Where do they lay their eggs? Do they spend more time in water or on land?

 

  • Laminated index cards with rules

 

Procedures:

  1. Say: “Today we are going to learn how to become expert readers by learning how to summarize. Summarizing text helps us to comprehend what we are reading. Can anyone raise their hand and tell me what they think it means to summarize when we read? (wait for answer) That’s right! Summarizing is when we take the most important ideas of a passage to share what the text was about. Do we mention every detail in the passage we read when we summarize? (wait for answer) No, Right! We only want to share the most important ideas! Summarizing texts helps us to understand the information.”

Now, we are going to review our Summarization Rules:

1. Leave out details that are unimportant because this information does not help us understand the text to summarize.

2. Leave out the details that are repeated because they have already been seen.

3. Choose important information from the text because those main ideas will help us to summarize the text to comprehend the overall message.

4. Find an umbrella term for the events that happen in the text.

5. Create a topic sentence that tells us what the text is about and mentions the main ideas to introduce your summary.

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2.  Say: “Now, before we start summarizing, we are going to go over some vocabulary so that we can understand the text. I will pass out our “Green Sea Turtle” article, but first, let’s review some key vocabulary. Looking at the Green Sea Turtle articles, the first sentence contains the word ‘species’. A species is a group of the same kind of living organisms. This tells us they are the largest kind of hard-shelled sea turtle, are you surprised? (wait for answer). You could use the word to say “We are a part of the human species.” The next unfamiliar word we see is ‘nesting’. Nesting just means the place where they stay and lay their eggs. Can anyone make up a sentence that includes the word ‘species’? If they nest along 80 countries, are they pretty common? (wait for an answer) That’s right! They are. Lastly, we should understand ‘migrate’ before reading. This mean travelling different places based on the time of year.”

 

3. Say: “Now, we are going to read the article. (Pull up the article with a projector and pass out individual copies for each student). Can anyone tell us how big they think Green Sea Turtles can get? Does anyone know how long they live? (Wait for answers). We are going to read to find out! Let’s read the article silently to ourselves and then discuss it together. While you are reading, I will pass out an index card with our summarization rules. I will go over our rules again before we discuss. I am going to show you how I would summarize the beginning of our article by following the summarization rules. I will be sure to highlight important information with a highlighter, and I will cross out unimportant information with a pencil. First, we are going to leave out unimportant information. I would leave out that the largest nesting populations are in Costa Rica and Australia. Second, we are supposed to leave out repeated information. I would leave out that they can be up to 440 pounds, because that just emphasizes how big they could be like the sentence before says. Third, we choose important information to include in our summary. Keep that they can rest for up to five hours before coming up for air. The first half of the passage should look like this:

- Green sea turtles are the world’s largest species of hard-shelled sea turtle. While most individuals weigh about 300 to 400 pounds. These turtles are found nesting along the coastline of more than 80 countries.

- They can rest for up to five hours at a time before coming up for air. When active, they typically alternate between being underwater for a few minutes and coming up to the surface to breathe air for a few seconds.

- Unlike most other sea turtles, adult green sea turtles eat a primarily plant-based diet consisting of seaweed and sea grass.

 

Then use this important information to construct one topic sentence. Ask yourself, “What is this passage about? What is the main idea?” My topic sentence would say, “Green Sea Turtles are the largest hard-shelled sea turtle, who spend most of their time underwater and eating plants.”

 

4. Say: “Now, I want you to summarize the second half of the bottlenose dolphin article. I will be walking around to offer help, and you can work together with your table partners. Make sure you used the summarization steps that are on your index card. Use your highlighter to highlight the important details in the text, and use your pencil to mark out any unimportant or repeated information. After that, I want you to construct one topic sentence on what the passage was about. When you finish, share your summarization process (along with reasoning to support) and your topic sentence with a partner. When everyone has finished sharing, we will discuss our findings with the class.” After students’ finish discussing, say: “What did you cross out as unimportant information? (with recorded distances longer than 1,615 miles (2,600 kilometers). What did you cross out as repeated information? (A female will dig out a nest with her flippers and lay a clutch of about 115 eggs). What did you highlight as important? (They have strong paddle-like flippers that help propel them through the water.) Finally, what was your topic sentence? (Green Sea Turtles are powerful animals that spend most time in water, but venture to the shore to lay their eggs.) Your marked paragraph should look like this:

- They have strong paddle-like flippers that help propel them through the water.

- Female green sea turtles leave the water in order to lay eggs on the beach and will choose the same nesting spot as where they were born.

- After about two months, the babies will use a special “egg tooth” to break their shells and hatch from their eggs.

- The first few years of a green sea turtle’s life are spent floating at sea, where they feed on plankton. As they grow older they find sea grass to eat.

- Adult green sea turtles face many threats, primarily from humans, including injuries from boat propellers, being caught in fishing nets, pollution, and poaching.

 

Make sure you use complete sentences and correct punctuation when you write your sentences. Now, we will discuss our summarization steps, our topic sentence, and answer the comprehension questions (How big do they grow? What do they eat? Where do they lay their eggs? Do they spend more time in water or on land?) After discussion, write ideas from each group on the board.

 

5. Say: “To finish up our lesson on summarization, I am passing out our next article title ‘Bottlenose Dolphins’ from National Geographic Kids. This article tells different facts about Bottlenose Dolphins, especially about how they communicate. I want you to read the entire article, use the steps of summarization on the poster and your index card, and write a paragraph on the entire article using highlighted information with a topic sentence. Use these questions to start your brainstorming on what to look for: “What is this article about? What is the purpose of the article? If I told someone about this article in just a few minutes, what would I say?” You will answer the comprehension questions (What does echolocation tell dolphins? What do they use their whistle for? How do dolphins hunt for fish? Where are bottlenose dolphins found?) and construct a topic sentence. Remember to use complete sentences and correct punctuation.

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6. For assessment, collect the student’s articles with markings, paragraph with topic sentence and comprehension question answers. The summarization checklist rubric (shown below) will be used to assess the paragraphs students wrote on ‘Bottlenose Dolphins’ on the following criteria: constructing a topic sentence, deletion of unimportant information, deletion of repeated information, inclusion supporting details, and construction of a summary that includes the main ideas.

 

Summarization Checklist Rubric:

When summarizing, did the student:

1. Construct a simple, topic sentence

2. Delete unimportant information

3. Delete repeated information

4. Include supporting details

5. Construct a summary that includes the main ideas

 

 

References:

Lingerfelt, Hannah. Blue Whales: The Biggest Animal on Earth! https://sites.google.com/view/hannahlingerfeltreadingdesigns/reading-to-learn?authuser=1

 

Murray, Bruce. Making Sight Words. Linus Publications, 2012. Print

 

Articles:

“Green Sea Turtles” National Geographic Kids. https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/green-sea-turtle/#green-sea-turtle-closeup-underwater.jpg

 

“Bottlenose Dolphins” National Geographic Kids. https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bottlenose-dolphin/#world-oceans-day-dolphins.jpg

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