Swingin' into Summarization

1. Say: “Good morning everyone! Today we are going to learn how to summarize! Can everyone say “summarize”? Great! Summarize means picking out the most important information and details of a story, book, or article, and sharing it with someone else. This skill is super helpful when we want to understand the main information of a story. So, today we are going to SWING into Summarization by reading an article about some swinging Orangutans.” 

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2. Say: “Before we read and summarize this article, let’s talk a little bit more about Orangutans. Does anyone know what an Orangutan is or anything about them? (Allow time for responses) Yes, they are very similar to monkeys and can swing from tree to tree! Today, we are going to get to read an article about Orangutans and you all are going to write a summary of the article. Before we read, let’s cover some new vocabulary that might be in our article. The first word we are going to look at is arboreal. Has anyone heard of this word before? (Wait for any responses) Arboreal means animals that live or are found around trees, for example, a koala bear is an arboreal animal. The second word is deforestation. Has anyone heard of this word before? (wait for any responses) Wow, a few of you have. Deforestation is the clearing or cutting down of forests. For example, in a tropical rain forest, there are a ton of trees. There are also a lot of businesses that sell wood, so they have to cut down a lot of trees in these tropical rain forests which makes the rainforest a lot smaller. Sometimes this means that animals lose their homes, do you think that maybe the orangutans might lose their home? We’ll have to read the article to find out. This leads us into our third vocabulary word, endangered species. Does anyone know what an endangered species is? (wait for any responses) An endangered species is when there are so few of those animals left alive on the planet that their species is in danger of going away forever. Sometimes when animals lose their homes, they begin to die off because they have no protection. Do you think this might happen to the Orangutans? Once again, we have to wait and read to find out.

3. Say: “Before we begin, we have to discuss how to write a summary and the rules that go along with writing a great summary. Don’t worry, these rules are very short and easy to remember, but I will also give you these awesome bookmarks that have the summarization rules on them to help remind you. The first rule is Delete, what does delete mean, anyone know? (allow time for response) Right! We want to delete some of the extra information that may not be super important to the overall article. The second rule is Shorten, can someone tell me what this might mean? Correct! We want to shorten the long parts. So first we delete the extra unimportant information, and then we want to shorten the longer important information. This can sometimes be pretty difficult, let’s practice one time together. If I say ‘We talked about addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication in class earlier today.’ You could shorten this by saying ‘We talked about math earlier today.’ Now, the third and final rule is Create. Once we have deleted the unimportant parts, shortened the longer parts, we have to create a main idea sentence for the paragraph.” 

4. Say: “To help you all get started, we are going to first practice summarizing together and then I am going to let you all try it on your own. (Hand out the article and summarization bookmarks) Each of you has your own Orangutan article, I am going to read it out loud while you all follow along. (Read the article aloud) Okay now that we have read the article, what is our first step? Good job, we need to delete first. Is the first sentence important? Yeah, some of it is! So we can highlight the important information in the sentence so we can remember it is important, and cross-out or delete the unimportant details. The sentence reads ‘As nighttime approaches in a tropical rain forest in parts of Sumatra and Borneo in Asia, orangutans prepare for sleep’ So what can we cross out that is not necessary to the sentence? Right, we could cross out or delete, Sumatra and Borneo because although that detail is interesting, it is not important enough to include in our summary. That means we can highlight, ‘as nighttime approaches in tropical rain forests in Asia, orangutans prepare for sleep.’ That way we remember it is important.  

5. Say: “Now let’s practice our second rule of shortening. In the second paragraph ti says, ‘In forks of trees high off the ground, shaggy, red-haired apes bend branches down to form comfortable mattresses of leaves and twigs.’ That’s a lot of information, let’s see if we can shorten this. Can anyone spot multiple words that all describe the same thing? Yes, forks of trees high off the ground is all just describing tall trees, right? So instead of saying, ‘forks of trees high off the ground’, we could say, ‘In tall trees,’. What else can we shorten in this sentence? Yes, the description of the Orangutan. What can we say instead of, ‘shaggy, red-haired apes’? Yes, red apes would work great! What else could we shorten in this sentence? Good job, instead of saying, ‘comfortable mattresses of leaves and twigs’ we could say, ‘pads of leaves and twigs’. So let’s put that all together, ‘In tall trees, red apes bend branches down to form pads of leaves and twigs’. We still provided the reader with similar information but used more general words to do so.” 

6. Say: “What is our final step? (wait for a response) That’s right! Create or make a sentence that captures the main idea of the paragraph. That means we want one sentence for each paragraph, but we don’t want to lose any of the important information. We can practice this by using the sentence I wrote on the board. This is two sentences, but I want just one sentence that gives me all of the important information we need. This particular paragraph talks mostly about where orangutans live, so I think that is going to be my main idea. So let me create a new sentence that captures the main idea and deletes all the extra stuff.” (write on board, cross out unused information) write: ‘Orangutans live in the tall trees of the tropical rain forest in Asia’ “This new sentence deletes the unimportant information and focuses on the main topic of where the Orangutans live.”

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7. (Pass out summarization worksheet) Say: “Now that we have an idea about what summarizing an article looks like, I want you to finish summarizing this article on your own. This worksheet I just passed out is called a summarization creation worksheet. This should help guide you through the article and help organize your main ideas and paragraphs. I will be walking around, so if you need any help just raise your hand and I’ll be right over. Once you are finished with your summarization creation worksheet I want you to start writing your summary. Don’t worry if this is not perfect, the creation worksheet will be for a grade and the summary is just your practice. Once you have finished both, turn them in and wait for directions.”