Rationale:

Once reading fluency is achieved, the next goal is comprehension. Summarization is essential to reading comprehension. A helpful method for summarization is the about-point method, which asks two important questions about the text: 1) What is the text about? This question is typically easy and will identify the topic that becomes the subject of the topic sentence. 2) What is the main point the writer is trying to make about the topic? This question is harder since authors typically make multiple points. Students must “superordinate” the points or find an umbrella term or phrase in order to cover all of the main points the author is making. The main point will become the predicate of the topic sentence.

Materials: white board and markers, student copies of National Geographic Kids Article National Parks (link below), highlighters, paper, and pencils for each student, summarization checklist, quiz for each student.

Procedures:

1. Explain to children why summarization is important: When we read a text, we would spend all day trying to remember all the words and all the details. Good readers don’t try to remember everything. They use summarization strategies to remember only the important points the author is making about the topic. In that way, they reduce a text that may have hundreds or thousands of words to a compact gist that is easy to remember.

2.  Say: The best way to summarize is using something called about-point. Does anyone know what this might be? (Wait for response) About-point is asking yourself an easy question and a hard question in order to make a topic sentence. The easy question is asking yourself “What is this text is about?” The hard question is “What is the main point the author is making about the topic?” To answer this question, we must think of an umbrella term for all the important points a writer is making.

3. Say: In a few minutes, I’m going to show you how I’d do about-point with a paragraph on our National Parks, which is from the article we will be reading today.  What is a National Park? How many are there? What was the first National Park? (Write all the answers on the white board to be reviewed and fact-checked later)

4. Say: Let’s talk about some vocabulary words that we’ll see in our reading today. The word is landscape. A landscape is all the visible features of an area of countryside or land, often considered in terms of their looks. It is not the animals you would see. For example, I would say “The rural landscape was beautiful with trees, and fields all around us.” What’s another landscape we might see? Would you say that a landscape is a group of animals in one location? (Discuss responses) Since we now know what a landscape is, finish this sentence: The winter landscape was… (possible answer: was cold with snow everywhere.)

5. Here is a paragraph about National Parks that we will summarize together:

Some Native Americans suggest that to make things right, tribes should manage the parks instead of the government, while still allowing visitors to enjoy the land. That includes snorkeling, riding horses, biking, skiing, hiking, climbing, spelunking, kayaking, camping, watching geysers blow, relaxing in hot springs, getting close to volcanoes, and so much more in the 401 national park areas. About 60 percent include important historical sites like battlefields, memorials, and historical homes, as well as the continent's prehistory: ancient dwellings, petroglyphs, and pictographs from earlier cultures.

This paragraph is about the activities you can do while at the parks, and the sites you can see while there, but what important points is the author making? (Write on board) The author is talking about how Native Americans should manage the parks, while still allowing visitors to enjoy the land, as well as the important historical sites you could see. Using this information, I can make a topic sentence summarizing what I just read:

    6. Now I want you to use about-point on a paragraph:

 

Setting aside wilderness areas for people to enjoy the rugged beauty of the United States while protecting the landscape, plants, and animals for future generations sounds like a modern idea, right? But it's not. More than 140 years ago, the United States created the world's first National Park.

 

        What is this paragraph about? Enjoying the beauty of the United States! But what is the main point the author is trying to make?          Enjoying the beauty of the United States sounds like a modern idea, but it actually is not.  Putting these together with what we             have learned earlier we can summarize the article with topic sentences, let’s try together (wait for responses and correct what is           wrong). 

    7. Now I want you all to practice! Read the article again, silently to yourselves and practice distinguishing important things from            unimportant things. Underline what is unimportant and highlight details that are important.

    8. Now I’d like you to finish reading the article and use about-point to make a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are              finished, you will have made a good summary of the article, which will help you remember important facts about the National            Parks. You are writing a short version of the article in your own words, including only the important ideas to remember. And to          make sure you remember; we will have 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:

1. How long ago was the world’s first National Park created?

2. In 1872, Congress set aside 3,400 square miles in three different states, which would later become what National Park?

3. Creating these parks, the US government was taking land away from who?

4. What are three things that you can do when you visit a National Park?

5.  What is one type of important historical site you might see?

Resources:

1. National Geographic Kids, Mission to Neptune: https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/history-of-the-national-parks

2. Using About-Point to Awaken the Main Idea, Bruce Murray: https://murraba.wixsite.com/reading-lessons/rl

3. Swimming to Summarization, Libby Mckee: https://edmckee13.wixsite.com/lessondeigns/reading-to-learn