Rationale:

 

The goal of reading is comprehension. At this level, students are ready to take on this challenging yet rewarding goal. This lesson introduces students to a very helpful strategy called summarization. It helps them to read and understand the story better. Students will learn to delete trivial and redundant information in an article about the mystery of bees.

 

Materials:

·   Class set of the article "Honeybee Mystery" by Kids National Geographic

·   Poster with the rules of summarization written on it

·   Assessment chart for each student

·   Colored marker for each student

·   Lined paper for each student

·   Projector/Smartboard

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Procedures:

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1. Say: “Who has read an article or book and told a friend about what you have read? Do you read them the whole book or just pull out important details from what you’ve read? (Ask students to answer). Exactly! You just tell them the important parts of the story! This is called summary, when you share the important parts from a story or article. Summarization is a helpful strategy that good readers use to help comprehend or understand what you are reading. If you can summarize, it is a good indication that you are able to understand what you have read.”

2. Say: “Before we start practicing summarization, let’s review what we have learned about bees so far this week! We’re going to review our vocabulary words. Yesterday we said there are different roles inside of a bee family. What were some of those roles? (Ask students to answer). Yes! The queen bee, the male drones, and the worker bees all have important jobs inside a bee hierarchy. We also talked earlier this week about the specific jobs that bees have. Who can tell me how other worker bees take care of the queen bee? (Ask students to answer). Awesome! They act as a nurse, attend to the queen and her needs, clean the hive and other bees, and attend to other duties in the hive. Do you think it would be easy to live like a bee? (Ask students to answer). I don’t think it would be. It sounds like a lot of work, especially if you worked for the queen!”

3. Say: “Everyone is doing so great! We’re going to talk more about summarization. Let’s take out a marker and a piece of paper. Turn the paper horizontal, like a hotdog, and divide it into three columns. Okay, the first rule in summarizing is to Delete the trivia, or unimportant information. We don’t want to keep information that repeats itself. Write this rule at the top of the first column on your paper. It can be helpful to cross out important information if you can mark on the article but in a book, you'll need to mental mark that certain part. This will help you to understand the message the author is trying to tell you. The second rude is to find the important information. Everyone write this at the top of the second column, please. When you find something that is important in a book or article, you should underline or highlight it so you can go back later and find it. The last rule of summarization is to make a topic sentence. Everyone write this at the top of the third column. Making a topic sentence isn’t easy because most texts don’t have topic sentences included. A topic sentence combines all of the important information in a short, condensed way so that you can summarize and understand the paragraph you’ve read.”

4. Say: “Now we will practice summarizing with a fun article called “Honey Bee Mystery”. Do you notice a lot of bees this time of year? I do! According to this article, they are disappearing, and we don’t know why! Let’s read more to find out. We’re going to look at the first paragraph together:  “All across the United States, honeybees are flying away from their hives and dying. Empty hives are causing a lot of worry about some important food crops. Bees give us a lot more than delicious honey. They are pollinators—they enable plants to produce the fruits and nuts we enjoy by carrying pollen from one plant or flower to the next. The wind pollinates oats, corn, and wheat, but many other plants (like apple and cherry trees and melon vines) depend on insects, bats, and birds."

5. Say: “Everyone watch as I use the rules to summarize this paragraph. Let’s look at the first sentence. (Repeat the first sentence) Do we think it’s important that these are honeybees dying all around the United States? I think no, so I will write this under the first column on my paper and cross it out. However, I do think sentence two is important. It explains what the whole paragraph is going to talk about. I am going to write sentence number two under the second column. The second and third sentence tlak about things bees are good for and I think it’s redundant and can be reduced down. I will write this in my first column. Let’s look at the next sentence. (Repeat the next sentence) I see some repeated information here. Do y’all? (Wait for response). I think the important thing to know is that the wind pollinates some types of grown food, but other plants depend on other animals for pollination. I am going to write this information in the second column for important information. In order to summarize, we cannot name all of the specifics or else we would have too much information. I am going to mark an X over the remaining information and write it in the first column.

6. Say: “Okay, now that we have finished the first paragraph let’s come up with a topic sentence. A topic sentence is one sentence that explains what the whole paragraph is talking about. I am going to look at the parts I have in column two for the important information. I have that:  Empty hives are causing a lot of worry about some important food crops. The wind pollinates oats, corn, and wheat, but many other plants (like apple and cherry trees and melon vines) depend on insects, bats, and birds. I would make this a topic sentence by saying: Empty beehives are causing a lot of worry for crops’ existence, because not all crops are pollinated by the wind, many are pollinated by insects, including bees. Now that I’ve made a topic sentence from the important information, does anyone have any questions?”

7. Say: “Now each of you are going to summarize the remaining paragraphs. Remember to use your paper with the columns to break up the information. Also, remember the rules of summarizing. Come up with one topic sentence for each paragraph. When you’re finished, I want you to staple the article to your paper with your column, and turn it in to me.  

8. Assessment: I am going to look at each student’s column chart to make sure they were successfully  summarizing the paragraphs. I will use the assessment checklist to record each child’s grade. Topic sentences might vary but I will be looking to see if the child included the important information in each.

 

Comprehension Questions:

1. Why are bees so hard to study?

2. Other than honey, what do bees give us?

3. What are researchers saying about the decline of bee health?

 

Assessment Checklist:

Student Name: ___________________________

1. Did the student fill out the chart on his/her paper?                                

2. Did the students come up with topic sentences for the remaining paragraphs?

3. Did the student successfully delete unimportant/redundant information?

4. Did the student successfully identify important parts?

5. Did the student use the important information to come up with topic sentence?

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References:

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National Geographic, "HoneyBee Mystery

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/honey-bee-mystery/

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Cook, A. Hunting to Read. http://aac0020.wixsite.com/abbylessondesigns/reading-to-learn

Faison, M. Buzz into Summing http://marycameronf.wixsite.com/msfaisonsreadingtips/buzz-into-

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Link back to Engagements: http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/home/classroom/engagements/