Reading to Learn | missbrooke

Cooling Down with Summarization

Reading to Learn

Rationale: The next step after learning to read fluently is comprehending what you are reading. Reading comprehension is an important literacy goal because understanding the message is the reason we read in the first place! By teaching children how to delete useless information and finding or creating a topic sentence that covers the main idea of the text, we can help readers recall information and gain reading comprehension. This lesson is designed to test comprehension skills and help students summarize text without thinking about unimportant details.

Materials:

Pencil and paper for each student
Individual copies of an article from Highlights Kids: “One Cool Job” (URL below)
Summarization checklist and comprehension quiz (below)

Procedures:

Explain to children why summarization is important. Say: “Today we are going to work on summarizing a passage! Great readers use summarization skills to understand the meaning of what they are reading. Since you are all fluent readers, you are all capable of learning this important comprehension skill. Readers with comprehension skills don’t try to remember everything, but use summarization strategies to recall the important points of the story.”

Say: “When using summarization skills, we have a few guidelines to follow. First, we need to get rid of any unimportant information in the text. Next, we need to read through and delete any information that is repeated anywhere in the text. Lastly, we need to choose or create a topic sentence to begin our summary.”

Say: “In a few minutes, I’m going to model how I’d use these summarization guidelines with a paragraph about being an ice cream taster, which is the article you are going to be reading today. Have you ever heard of someone tasting ice cream as their job? How many flavors do you have to test? Would you get sick from eating so much ice cream? These are some of the questions you will be learning to answer today.”

Say: “Let’s talk about an important vocabulary word you’ll be reading: manufacturer. A manufacturer is someone that makes goods for sale or owns a factory. For example, ‘Sally is a manufacturer of swimsuits.’ Can you think of something that can be manufactured? Finish this sentence: My friend owns a company that manufactures…”

Say: “Here is a paragraph from the story:

But ice cream runs in his family. ‘It was like I fell into a batch of ice cream,’ he says, chuckling. Four generations of Harrisons have been ‘in’ ice cream, including his great-grandfather, who owned two ice-cream parlors in New York City in the 1880s; his father, who owned a dairy-ingredients factory in Georgia; and his uncle, who owned an ice-cream factory in Tennessee.

This paragraph is about the history of how John Harrison came to be an ice cream taste tester. Did you see any information that is unnecessary in this passage? Are the first two sentences important? No, so these sentences can be deleted. I am now left with, ‘Four generations of Harrisons have been ‘in’ ice cream, including his great-grandfather, who owned two ice-cream parlors in New York City in the 1880s; his father, who owned a dairy-ingredients factory in Georgia; and his uncle, who owned an ice-cream factory in Tennessee.’ Using this information, I can make a topic sentence: The Harrison family has been a part of the ice-cream tasting profession since the 1880’s, beginning with John’s great-grandfather, his father, and his uncle.”

6. Say: “Now I want you to use the summarizing rules we discussed on the next paragraph:

In a typical morning on the job, Harrison tastes and evaluates 60 ice-cream samples—three each from the 20 flavor batches produced the previous day. Starting with vanilla and working up to stronger flavors like mint chocolate-chip, he slices open each container. Then he lets the ice cream warm up to about 12 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature in the storage freezer is -20 degrees. Most people eat ice cream at between 0 and 5 degrees. But cold ice cream can numb the taste buds, Harrison explains, so ‘You get more flavor from warmer ice cream, which is why some kids like to stir it, creating ice-cream soup.’

What information is unnecessary? The details about the temperature of the freezer and the temperature people eat ice cream at can be deleted. What are we left with? ‘In a typical morning on the job, Harrison tastes and evaluates 60 ice-cream samples—three each from the 20 flavor batches produced the previous day. Starting with vanilla and working up to stronger flavors like mint chocolate-chip, he slices open each container. Then he lets the ice cream warm up to about 12 degrees Fahrenheit. But cold ice cream can numb the taste buds, Harrison explains, so ‘You get more flavor from warmer ice cream, which is why some kids like to stir it, creating ice-cream soup.’ Now we can use this information to create a topic sentence: Harrison tests numerous types of ice cream flavors at certain temperatures to create more flavor.”

7. Say: “Now I’d like you to finish reading the article and use your summarizing skills to create a topic sentence for the remaining paragraphs. When you are finished, you will have a good summary of the article, which will help you remember the important information. Don’t summarize examples or trivia; they are only given to help you understand the main ideas. You will be writing a short version of the article in your own words, including only the important ideas to remember. Be sure to ask questions if anything is confusing about the article, since we will be having a quiz after everyone finishes writing!”

Assessment: Collect each student’s summary of the article, and evaluate the summarization using the following checklist:

______ Collected important information

______ Ignored trivia and examples in summary

______ Significantly reduced the text from the original

______ Sentences brought ideas together from each paragraph

______ Sentences organized coherently into essay form

Quiz:

What is the importance of being an ice cream taster?
What degree should you have to be successful in the job?
What does tasting begin with?
What are the three S’s in tasting?
What is the most popular ice cream flavor in the U.S.?

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"One Cool Job" Article

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