Miss Sydney Hall

Say: Can anyone tell me if they have ever read a book that you found interesting, so you told your friend about it? Did you tell them every little detail, or did you just tell them the important parts that you read? [Call on a student who has their hand raised.] Yes, that’s right, you only told them the important parts of the story! This is called summarizing. Summarizing is a skill that can help us to better understand the books we read, therefore making us better readers! If you can summarize a book or an article, then that lets me know you understand the material that you have read.

Say: When using summarization skills, we have a few guidelines to follow. [Hold up poster with summarizing rules and hang somewhere in the classroom for students to refer back to.] First, we need to get rid of any unimportant information in the text. To do that, we read through the entire article and then we go delete any information that is unnecessary or is repeated anywhere in the text. Then, we highlight, underline, or circle the things that seem really important to us! Finally, we take all of those important parts of the article or story and we create a topic sentence to begin our summary.

Say: A really good way to summarize and create topic sentences is to find an “umbrella term” that all of the ideas in a passage can fall under! An example of this would be if I was reading a passage that told me about different types of fish, sharks, and jellyfish that live in the ocean, my umbrella term could be sea creatures, because fish and sharks and jellyfish are all sea creatures and that’s what the passage is about!

Say: I’m going to model how I’d use these summarization guidelines with the first paragraph of an article about fish recognizing human faces that we are going to read today. Have any of you ever had a pet fish? Have you ever thought that your fish can recognize you and know who you are? You’re going to get to find out all about if fish can recognize people or not when we read this entire article!

Say: Here is the first paragraph from the story:

“While your pet fish may appear to be of your presence, chances are it knows you extremely well and can probably even identify you from a crowd of human faces! At least, that is the conclusion reached by scientists the University of Oxford in the U.K. and the University of Queensland in Australia, following an  study of the , a species of tropical fish that can be found all the way from India to Indonesia, the Philippines, and Australia.”

This paragraph is about scientists from the universities in the United Kingdom, which is Great Britain, and Australia studying the archerfish to find out if it can recognize human faces.
Remember the word “oblivious” means not aware, so at the beginning of the paragraph they are saying that we may think our fish don’t even know that we are there!
Was there any information that you thought was unnecessary in this passage? What about that part we just talked about at the beginning? No? That’s right. We can delete the part where it says our pet fish may seem oblivious to us! Do we need to know where the archerfish can be found? Not really, right? We can delete those countries as well.
Now, if I look at the information that is left, I can come up with an umbrella term for all of this information to go under. I think the main message of this passage is that scientists are studying fish, so I’m going to make my umbrella term “research study”.
Using the information that is left and my umbrella term, I can make a really good topic sentence:

“Scientists from Great Britain and Australia have studied the archerfish to see if it can recognize and identify human faces.”

Now I have a really good topic sentence to summarize that paragraph to help me later summarize the entire article!

Say: Before you read the rest of the article, let’s go over some of our vocabulary words. Being familiar with new vocabulary words will help you have a better understanding of the meaning of the article.

Vocabulary List:
​Subtle – something so small or precise that is difficult to explain or describe (Example Sentence: There was a subtle cut on her face after the accident, but almost no one could notice it.)
Discernible – capable of being recognizable (Example Sentence: He stuck out in a crowd because of his discernible red hair.)
Prey – an animal that is hunted or killed by another animal for food (Example Sentence: The lion quietly watched its prey, waiting for the perfect time to run after it.)
Devour – to swallow or eat up hungrily (Example Sentence: I was so hungry that I devoured my pizza in just a few minutes.)
Debunk – to expose something as being false (Example Sentence: The detective debunked the theory that the maid stole the jewelry.)
Reputed – reported or supposed to be such (Example Sentence: He was reputed to have kept a cool head during battle and wasn’t easily intimidated.)
Predator – an animal that lives by killing and eating other animals (Example Sentence: When an owl is hunting for mice to eat, the owl is the predator.)

[The following is an example of a vocabulary review for the word predator: First, define the word and read the example sentence above. Then ask sample questions using the word and have students complete sentence fragments.]
i.    What is an example of an animal that is a predator?
ii.   Are animals that mostly eat plants predators?
iii.  Sharks are predators because they eat...
iv.  Animals that run away or hide from predators might be...
 

Say: Now I want you to practice summarizing with the rest of the article “Surprise! Your Pet Fish May Be Able To Recognize You!” Let’s read the rest of the article and see if our own fish might be able to actually recognize us! I want you to delete and highlight things from the passage, create a topic sentence, and then write a paragraph summarizing the main points of the article. Be sure to look at our summarizing rules if you forget anything. Also, be sure that this summary is in your own words and not your neighbor’s or the author’s. Summarization works best when you read the article slow, read the important parts at least two times, and take notes as you go. Taking notes will help you point out the main ideas easier. Be sure to ask questions if anything is confusing about the article and we will discuss it! We’ll be having a quiz once everyone is done writing and you’ll turn all of your work into me! [Walk around to be sure students are following the summarization rules and answer any questions they may have about the article and assignment.]