READING COMPREHENSION ROUND-UP!!!

Reading to Learn Design
By: Madeline Rigdon

Rationale:

As readers become more fluent, the goal is to round-up successful readers by encouraging students to master reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is the ability to comprehend what the text is saying as well as the message that the text conveys. To achieve this goal, a reader can use summarization to understand the overall message of a text. When summarizing, students will take the most important and basic information from the text and include only those pieces in a shortened version of the text that highlights the text’s main statement and purpose. An effective method of summarizing is the about point method, which asks two important questions: 1) What is the text about? and 2) What is the main point the article is saying about that topic? This method will help students locate the most important information in the text. In this lesson, students will learn to summarize a passage by highlighting and focusing on the important information while crossing out the irrelevant information and describing the text in a few sentences.

Materials:

Article about “cattle” from Britannica Kids
Highlighters
Pencil and paper
Reading checklist
Reading comprehension quiz

Procedures:

Say “Good morning class, today we are going to continue working on our reading skills. When we read a story is it more fun to understand what the story is about or to read without knowing what the text is saying? It’s more fun to understand what we’re reading right?! That way if it’s a funny story we can read it and laugh or if it’s a thrilling story we can read it and get excited! Understanding the main point and purpose of the story is practicing reading comprehension. Today we are going to work on our reading comprehension skills by learning how to summarize. Does anyone know what summarize means? That’s right! You break down the most important information from the story like the main point and purpose and form that into a smaller explanation. You summarize everyday without even realizing it! Like for example, when you tell your friends a cool story about something you did or that happened to you! Summarizing is going to help us improve our reading comprehension skills and our story telling skills!”
Say: “One way we can summarize is by using a strategy called about-point. When we use about-point, you will ask yourself two different questions about your reading. [Write the questions on the board for students to reference]. You will answer a more surface level question, “What is the text about?” and a harder question, “What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?” When you answer the tough question, it will help you to identify the “umbrella term” that covers the important parts that the author has written. To find the important parts the author wrote, you must find and take away any trivial information. It helps to cross it out so you can’t see it. When you have the answers to these questions, it will later help you to formulate your sentences, especially your topic sentence!”
Say: “Today when we summarize, there are three rules that we must follow in order to summarize texts. 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. Now that we know these rules, we can use them for summarization.”
Say: “When we summarize a story, we only read a little bit of it at a time. After we are done reading each small part, we look back on it and determine what the most important parts of the story are. Remember, we cross out what we don’t need and highlight what is important which means we need to be very selective when highlighting.”
Say: “Now I am going to show you how to summarize. We are going to read an article about cattle. Book talk: “In the article, we are given a lot of information about cattle and the different aspects of their life! Let’s read the article to find out more about cattle and how they relate to cowboys! Do any of you know what cattle means? (Let students raise their hands and answer). I am going to read the first two paragraphs of the article and we will see if we can find out.”

“Cattle are large, hoofed mammals that people raise for their meat, milk, or hides. In some places cattle also pull carts or farm equipment. Cattle belong to the scientific family Bovidae, which also includes buffalo, bison, and yaks.

Cattle are given different names depending on their age and sex. The female is called a heifer calf when young and a cow in maturity. A male, first called a bull calf, grows into a bull. A mature male that has been operated on so that it cannot breed is known as a steer. When it is older it is called an ox.”

Say: “Before we go over how to summarize this paragraph, let’s look at some words in this paragraph that might not be familiar to you. The first word is “mammal”. A mammal is an animal that breathes air, has a backbone, and grows hair at some point during its life.

Why is this article talking about mammals? Because all cattle, cows, buffalos, bison, and yaks, are mammals! Now that we have gone over some vocabulary in the text that might be unfamiliar, let’s summarize!

In this first paragraph, there is a lot of useful information. I will now use a highlighter to highlight the important parts of this paragraph. I am first going to highlight “large, hoofed mammals that people raise for their meat, milk, or hides” since this is key information about cattle and what they are. Next, I would also highlight “cattle also pull carts or farm equipment.” because it explains what they do.

Don’t forget, we will also use a pencil to mark out any information that is not needed.

Say: “Now that we have picked two pieces of information lets see if we can find more! At this time I want y’all to help me summarize the rest of those two paragraphs. Do you think that “A mature male that has been operated on so that it cannot breed is known as a steer” is important? (Allow students time to answer) I agree, I don’t think that part is very important either because when we summarize we just need to mention the basic information. (Give students time to work with a partner to decide what are the important parts of the paragraph).”
Say: “Now that I have shown you and we have summarized together; you will continue to summarize this article on your own. I want each of you to read the rest of the article on cattle that I have printed for each of you. Once you are done reading, come to my desk and I will give you a Summarizing Checklist from me. This will help you write a summary of the article based on the highlighted information that you found. It is okay if your summary is short, because a summary is supposed to be a brief version of the article. When you are done with the checklist, share your written summary with a partner and discuss your similarities and differences. The last thing we will do is take a quiz!”

Reading Checklist:

Did I….

___ highlight the important details

___ cross out what is not important

___ write my topic sentence

___ write a 3-5 sentence summary

Did my friend….

___ find important and basic information

___ create a topic sentence based on the highlighted information

___ include a 3-5 sentence summary

___ include key ideas in the summary

Quiz:

What are cattle?
What environment do cattle live in?
What do cattle eat?
What do cowboys and farmers use cattle for?
How long do cattle in the wild live?

Reference:

Cattle: https://kids.britannica.com/kids/article/cattle/352928

https://aharrers.wixsite.com/ctrd/running-with-reading-comprehension

http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/insights/

RC Round Up!!: Text