RL Design: Santa's Summarization Workshop
- Anabella Imbornone
- Nov 16, 2021
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 8, 2021
Rational: As teaching children to read words and texts is a primary goal of literacy instruction, the ultimate goal is for students to understand, learn from, and enjoy the meanings that are encoded within these words and texts. Reading comprehension is a skill that plays a large part in this literacy development that is defined as the ability to get the message of a text by reading. We can reach proper levels of reading comprehension by a product of decoding skills and language comprehension. In this lesson we will develop skills of reading comprehension through effective methods of summarization of texts. Students will learn to summarize by reading a text, marking out any information in the story that is not important, highlighting the important information and terms in the story, creating a topic sentence based on the umbrella terms and the highlighted text, write a 6-8 sentence summary, and answer comprehensive reading questions.
Materials:
• Letter from Santa
• Highlighter
• Pencil/Paper
• Reading checklist
• Comprehension assessment
Procedure:
1. Say “Hello class! Today we will be continuing to practice and work hard on our reading skills. One of the best parts about learning to read is being able to understand and enjoy what we’re reading, wouldn’t y’all agree?! Raise your hand if you think it’s more fun to understand what the story you’re reading is about while you’re reading it? Exactly! It’s no fun to read when we don’t know what we’re reading is about. So today we are going to practice our understanding of our stories’ meanings by reading and summarizing what we read! Who can remind me what a summary is? Yes! A summary is a short retelling of the main points of a story! And in that retelling we look at the 5 W’s and H of a story! Who can remind me what those are? Yes! Who is in the story, What main points happen/are made, When and Where did it happen, Why did it happen, and How did it happen? The easiest way to find this information while you read is to follow three very important rules that we will practice today in order to summarize a text. The first rule is to mark out any information in the story that is not important. Second, highlight the important information and terms in the story. The third rule is to create a topic sentence based on the umbrella terms and the highlighted text. Raise your hand if you can tell me what an umbrella term might be. … An umbrella term is the answer to the “What” question we ask (“What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?”), and it can help us create a sentence that highlights the topic of the story, called our topic sentence. Great job using those listening ears to understand more about summarization, everyone! Now that we have worked together to know what a summary is and how to make one, you all will each get a chance to practice on your own.
2. Model: Say, “To show you what I mean, I have this small paragraph that I read myself and summarized last night: ”
Coffee is a popular drink with many people in the world. This is evident from the number of coffee chains across the globe like Starbucks and Café Coffee Day, which are gaining increasing popularity.
Coffee, like tea, has caffeine which acts as a brain stimulant and leads to alertness making coffee breaks much awaited especially in jobs with high stress levels.
Coffee is a beverage that is made from the roasted beans of coffee pods usually in a powdered form. The three types of coffee beans are Arabica, Robusta and a blend of the two. They are grown in parts of Africa, South America and Indian Peninsula.
The popular coffees on a menu are Espresso, Café Latte, Macchiato, Choc Latte, etc. that may have added milk, or other ingredients like nutmeg. The taste ranges from bitter [as in an Espresso] to mild sweet [as brewed in some parts of India], served with a large helping of milk and sugar. Instant coffee needs no brewing. Cold coffee is also a popular milk based drink. In many recipes, especially desserts, such as Tiramisu and some Ice Creams, coffee is used as a popular flavouring agent.
“After I marked out any information in the story that is not important and highlighted the important information and terms in the story, it looked like this:” Switch slides to show:
Coffee is a popular drink with many people in the world. This is evident from the number of coffee chains across the globe like Starbucks and Café Coffee Day, which are gaining increasing popularity.
Coffee, like tea,has caffeine which acts as a brain stimulant and leads to alertness making coffee breaks much awaited especially in jobs with high stress levels.
Coffee is a beverage that is made from the roasted beans of coffee pods usually in a powdered form. The three types of coffee beans are Arabica, Robusta and a blend of the two. They are grown in parts of Africa, South America and Indian Peninsula.
The popular coffees on a menu are Espresso, Café Latte, Macchiato, Choc Latte, etc. that may have added milk, or other ingredients like nutmeg. The taste ranges from bitter [as in an Espresso] to mild sweet [as brewed in some parts of India], served with a large helping of milk and sugar. Instant coffee needs no brewing. Cold coffee is also a popular milk based drink. In many recipes, especially desserts, such as Tiramisu and some Ice Creams, coffee is used as a popular flavouring agent.
“After creating a topic sentence: this is what my summary looked like: ‘Coffee is a popular drink made from roasted beans called Arabica and Robusta blend beans grown from Africa, South America, and Indian Peninsula. When brewed, the taste ranges from bitter to mildly sweet are can be found on menu’s as Espresso, Café Latte, Macchiatos, etc. It can be also used as a flavoring in many recipes especially desserts.’ Now that you’ve seen my example of summarization we can get to yours!”
3. Say: “Now, I know you guys are itching to know what we will be reading about and summarizing! I thought, with the holidays coming closer and closer, what a better way to practice our reading than with good old Saint Nick himself! Sadly, I couldn’t get Santa to fly his sleigh all the way to school himself, but I found this grade short story about Santa Claus and Christmas eve. I think you all will love it!”
a. Say, “First, we are going to go over a quick vocabulary lesson so that everyone knows all the words and their meanings in this story today. First off, are the names of two companies. Does anyone know what a company is? That’s right it’s a place that sells you something, like Walmart, haha! A company doesn’t always have to sell you just items though, sometimes companies sell services too. Have any of your grown ups ever received a package at your front door? [“My mom gets things delivered from Amazon like every single day!”] Oh goodness! Haha! Amazon does deliver packages you’re right. Well two companies that help deliver packages and letters are FedEx and UPS….” Continue vocabulary lesson including words, abrupt/abruptly, robust, coaxing, persuasive, convinced, where-abouts.
4. 1. Say: “Now remember it is important that we understand what this story is about so you can share what you read with others, which is why we are making summaries. Take out your highlighters and pens and remember to stop every sentence or two to cross off any non-important information and to highlight the important points and terms that were said in the story. When you are finished with reading, I want you to come to my desk to get a reading checklist from me before you summarize. This is going to help make sure you have everything you need for a great summary. Now get to reading, friends!”
a. Did I….
___ Highlight the important details
___ Cross out what is not important
___ Write my topic sentence
___ Write a 6-8 sentence summary
___ Does my summary include who.
___ Does my summary include what.
___ Does my summary include where and when.
___ Does my summary include why and how.
5. When the student comes to receive their checklist, say: “Ok, here is you checklist, when you are finished writing your summary you may draw a picture or sit and have quiet thoughts, or even re-read the letter. Then we will take a small quiz about the letters.”
6. Once everyone is done their summary and have been allowed a break, introduce the quiz: “Great job with those summaries everyone! From what I saw you all did a great job. I can’t wait to fully read all of your summaries later on! What we are going to do now, is take a short quiz to fully soak up and show off everything we learned practiced today in reading and making summaries. Remember to read each question carefully and answer it thoughtfully.” Pass out quizzes
a. Comprehension quiz questions :
• What parts of the story should you highlight when reading to summarize?
• What are the 5 W’s and an H that we ask ourselves when summarizing?
• How did santa come into their house in the middle of the night?
• Who tried to catch santa?
• What did the narrator and his brother see?
• Why was his dad not around to see santa?
References:
• Santa Claus Short story excerpt.
• Sample coffee paragraph
• Design inspired lesson:
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