Let’s Sum it Up


Jamie Self

Rationale: Comprehension is the ability to understand and remember what one has read.  There are several strategies that have been proven to be useful in aiding comprehension.  One of these strategies is summarization.  Summarization helps students to recognize the important information in text while eliminating the less important information.  In this lesson we will teach and implement summarization to help students with comprehension.


·        Paper for each child

·        Pencils

·        Chalkboard

·        Chalk

·        Bookmarks with the five steps for summarizing

·        Poster with five steps for summarizing

o       Pick out important details that are necessary to the story.

o       Pick out the less important or repeated ideas from the passage and eliminate them.

o        Highlight the important and necessary details using key words

o       Pick a topic sentence

o       Invent a topic sentence if there is none. 

·        National Geographic Kids Viking Voyages article for each child


1. Ask the class if anyone can tell you what comprehension means. “That’s right. Comprehension is understanding what we are reading and then remembering it after we are done.  Today we are going to learn how to summarize.  When we summarize, we choose the most important parts of what we are reading.  This will help us better understand and remember what we read.”

2. “Today we are going to learn the five steps of summarizing.” Have students follow along as you read the steps on the poster.  “The first step is to pick out important details that we think are necessary to the story.  Number two says to pick out the less important ideas and take them away.  Number three says to highlight the important and necessary details using key words.  Next, we pick a topic sentence.  Our last step is to make up a topic sentence if we don’t have one.  I’m going to pass out bookmarks to each of you that have these steps on them so you won’t forget our five steps of summarization.  You can use these whenever you need a little help.”

3. Pass out the article to the class. Have them read the first paragraph silently to themselves.  “While you are reading, make sure that you are getting enough information to summarize the paragraph.  Remember you are trying to figure out the important information from the information that is not as important.  Raise your hand when you are done.”

4. Once all the students have finished reading the first paragraph, model summarizing with the class. “Now we are going to use our five steps to summarize the first paragraph.  What is the first thing we need to do?  That’s right; we need to pick out important information that is necessary to the story.”  (Write the following on the board)  1. Vikings were feared for many years. 2.  Not all Vikings were evil doers.  3. They were the first Europeans to sail to America.  “Did anybody get anything else?” (If someone did, write that on the board as well)  Our next step is to pick out the less important points from the paragraph.  I think these would be:  1.They stole gold.  2. They captured slaves.  3. Some were farmers and craftspeople.”  (Write these on the board) “Did anyone get something different?”  (If they did, write it on the board)  “What is my next step? That’s right. We need to highlight the important and necessary details using key words.  I thought that the keywords were Vikings, feared, villains, first to sail to America.  Did anybody get any other words?”  (If they did, write it on the board.)  “What do I need to do now?  That’s right.  I need to write a topic sentence.  The topic sentence I came up with is:  Although Vikings were feared, they were not all evil doers.  They were the first to sail to America.  Did somebody get something else?” (Write other student generated ideas on the board and discuss why they chose that.  Make sure that all of this is written on the board so that they will be able to refer back to it when they are reading the rest of the article by themselves.  

5. “Now I want you to read the rest of the article silently. Once you have finished reading, take out your piece of paper and pencil and summarize the articleIf you need any help you can look on the board or at your bookmarks or you can raise your hand and I’ll come and help you!”


Assessment: Collect the student’s summarizations and check to make sure that they used all of the steps of summarization correctly. 


National Geographic Kids. 2005. Viking Voyages.


Summin’ It All Up

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