Reading with Miss Mungenast

Procedures: 

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1. Say: Have you ever really wanted to tell one of your friends about a story, but you didn’t want to ruin the whole story for them? And you didn’t know what to tell them and what not to tell them? Some stories are so long that it is hard to figure out what is important to say and what is not! If you give too many details, your friend might not think your story is interesting and might not want to read it. Well today, we are going to learn how to summarize stories. Who can tell me what they think it means to summarize? (Give students time to answer). Right, summarizing means to give a short statement of the main points of something. We are going to learn how to summarize stories today!

2. Say: Get out your Summarization Rules worksheet! We are going to talk about the three main rules of summarization that help us to narrow down stories to short statements. Let’s take a look at our worksheet. You’ll see that it is divided into three sections. (Divide whiteboard in front of class into three sections so that you can write along with students). The first section says “Delete”. Can someone tell me what it means to delete something? (Give class time to answer). Right, it means to get rid of something. In summarizing, it means to erase information that isn’t important from our brains. When you read a story, you can mentally “erase” the words that aren’t important for the main idea! Write in your chart what it means to “delete” so that you can use it later when you summarize something that we read.

3. Say: The second rule of summarization is to “substitute”. What does it mean to substitute something? Like having a substitute teacher? (Give students time to respond) Right, it means to replace something! For example, if I was sick for a day, y’all would have a substitute teacher replace me. After we delete information from the story, we substitute the long parts for shorter parts. When we substitute information, we are finding an umbrella term for longer pieces of information. Let’s practice an example of this! If we were reading a story that had a sentence about “monkeys, sloths, and frogs”, we could substitute something shorter for that list. What do all three of those words fit into? (Give time for students to respond). Right! We could delete the words “monkeys, sloths, and frogs” in our brains and substitute it with the word “animals”. Write down in your notes what it means to substitute!

4. Say: The third rule of summarization is to “create”. What does it mean to create? (Give students time to respond). Yes, creating means to make something new. Once we delete information that isn’t important and substitute in the shorter version, we need to create main idea sentences. Making our substitutions into sentences is how we create, which is the third step of our summary rules! Write this into your worksheet.

5. Say: Today, we are going to read an article together called “Independence Day”. Do you have any guesses as to what this article is about? (Let students guess). Right, this article is about America and the Fourth of July! Do you know who wrote the Declaration of Independence? (Let students guess). Why did we need the Declaration of Independence? (Let students guess). We are going to read “Independence Day” to learn these things, along with many other interesting facts about the Revolutionary War and how it ended! We are going to read the first paragraph together, and talk about the three steps of summarizing as we read the article. After that, I will let you read the article on your own. As you read, highlight what you think is the important details of the story that you will need to delete, substitute, and create!

6. Say: (Pass out Practice Summarization Worksheet). Okay, we are going to read this article together. As I am reading it out loud to you, I want you to practice taking notes. Delete what you think is unimportant by crossing out words, and make notes on your worksheet as we read about what you think the main ideas of the passage are. *Teacher reads first paragraph of article aloud to students* “Also called the Fourth of July, Independence Day marks the historic date in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was approved by a group called the Continental Congress. The written declaration basically stated that the American colonies were tired of being ruled by Great Britain. It was time for them to become their own country.”

7. Say: We can delete phrases such as “Fourth of July, Independence Day, historic date”, “the  Declaration of Independence”/“written declaration”, and “American colonies were tired of being ruled by Great Britain”/“time for them to become their own country”. We can substitute them with “Independence Day, celebrated on the Fourth of July”, “the Declaration of Independence”, and “America wanted to separate from Great Britain and be their own country”.Then, from what we’ve deleted and substituted, we can create our own summary! “Independence Day, celebrated on the Fourth of July marks the day in 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was written. It was written because America wanted to separate from Great Britain and be their own country.” See how we used our steps to make information shorter?

8. Say: Now, each of you is going to do this on your own! With the rest of the article, delete, substitute, and create sentences to summarize the rest of the article. Once you have read each paragraph, write a summary for it on the worksheet you have with you. When you are finished, staple your worksheet and article together and turn it in to me. When you turn it in, I will give you questions to answer. After you finish answering the questions, turn those into me also. 

9. Once students turn in Summarization Practice worksheet to me, I will use the Assessment Checklist to check their work. After that, I will grade their comprehension questions based on how many they answer correctly out of four. 

10. Comprehension Questions: 

    1. Why was the Declaration of Independence written?

    2. Who mainly wrote the Declaration of Independence?

    3. Where is the Declaration of Independence today?

    4. Who was president when the Declaration of Independence was written? 

    5. Why is the Declaration of Independence recognized around the wold as an important message of human rights?

    6. Why is Independence day celebrated with fireworks, parades, and bonfires?