Wondering About and Summarizing Women’s History! 

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Reading to Learn

Katherine Apel

 

Rationale

When readers can read fluently and with accuracy, they reach comprehension. Students have learned to identify words and add to their sight word collection. They know main plot points, but they need comprehension. Fluent readers increase their reading comprehension through summarization. Looking for key details and having the skills to not only highlight important information, but to also know when details are trivial is important in comprehension. This lesson is designed to teach children how to summarize to exhibit their comprehension of texts. 

 

Materials 

1. “Women’s History Month” Article - National Geographic Kids (class copy)

2. White board and dry erase markers

3. Construction paper and markers 

4. Summarization sheet (below) 

5. Highlighters (enough for the class)

6. Comprehension questions ; Who were some women honored by Women’s History Month? How long did we originally honor women’s history? What are some ways we honor Women’s History Month? Do other countries have Women’s History Month? How long have we celebrated this month? Who was responsible for making March Women’s History Month?

 

Procedure

1. Say: “We have been focusing on how we can become fluent readers and now that we have learned to read with accuracy, we are going to focus on something called summarization. Can anyone tell me what summarizing means? [wait for students to answer] Yes! Summarizing means retelling the main points of a text. It does not mean telling the exact story with every detail. We want to find out the most important details to include in our summary. Summarizing helps us comprehend stories. Today, we are going to look at the founding of Women’s History Month and what it celebrates. 

2. Say: “In order to summarize an article, we must go over how to summarize an article. I am passing out a piece of construction paper and markers and we are all going to write our rules for summarizing, so we can look back at them whenever we need them. [Pass out paper and markers] I want us all to write ‘Rules.’ [Model on the board] Our first rule is very important. What do we think it is? [Let students answer] Decide the topic and search for important details! That is number one. Number two is to leave out small details. We don’t need every detail from the text in our summary. So we want to keep a focus on our topic and put details into two categories: important details and small details. Our last rule is to create! We want to write our summary after we know the topic and important details. 

 

Rules

1. Decide the topic and search for important details.

2. Leave out small details.

3. Create a summary.

 

1. Say: “Before I hand out the article about Women’s History Month, does anyone know what month we celebrate it? Why do you think we celebrate it? Who are some people we might celebrate? [wait and let students answer] Those are all great answers! We celebrate Women’s History Month in March and some people we might focus on would be Michelle Obama, Ida B. Wells, Amelia Earhart and more! Great job. Before we read the article, let’s go over a few vocabulary words. Our first word is correspond which means to match or go with. ‘How does learning correspond with school?’  Our next word is Amendment. Does anyone know what an Amendment is? [let student’s answer] An Amendment is something we add on to our Constitution. Our Constitution consists of our laws and Amendments come after the Constitution to make new laws. What is an Amendment you know of? The 19th Amendment gave women the right to… Our last word I want to review is contribution. A contribution is an action that adds to something bigger. I could say that in a group project, everyone should contribute equally. Have you contributed to chores around the house? Everyone needs to contribute when we… I have written our vocabulary words on the board in case you forget.

2. [Pass out summarization sheet, Women’s History Month article, and highlighters] Say: “We are going to practice summarizing together. I want you to follow along as I read. [Read the first section ‘How it Started’ aloud] So our article title gives us our topic which is Women’s History Month. What should we do next? [let students answer] Yes! We should search for important details. If I know our topic is Women’s History Month, I should include which month it is. I am going to find where the article says that. I found it in the third paragraph and I am going to highlight where I found the answer. So, on the left column under ‘Paragraph #’ I am going to write ‘3.’ [Show on the board] In the second column, I am going to write the main idea, so I am going to write ‘March is Women’s History Month.’ The article also writes why we have Women’s History Month and I think that is important. In the second paragraph it talks about how President Carter expressed that women contributed to the foundations of America, but were rarely recognized. I am going to highlight it and add this to my columns. I also see how it lists the cities that eventually acknowledged Women’s History Month, but I don’t think that is vital to the topic so I am not going to include that on my paper. 

3. Say: Summarizing helps us understand our text better. We can acknowledge the key details of the text, but then we also can leave time for deeper comprehension of the text. Not all information you see is important. If I was telling you about my day, I probably would not talk about the outfits I tried on before I chose one or the decisions I made about breakfast. I would include important information like spending time with my friends or eating a nice meal! 

4. Say: “Now that we have practiced summarizing together, I want you to practice by finishing the article. As you read, fill out your summarization sheet and refer back to our summarizing rules! I am going to walk around the class to help if you have any questions. When you have finished reading the article and writing your summarization points, turn them in to me and work on the comprehension questions I have written on the board. (Who were some women honored by Women’s History Month? How long did we originally honor women’s history? What are some ways we honor Women’s History Month? Do other countries have Women’s History Month? How long have we celebrated this month? Who was responsible for making March Women’s History Month?)

5. I will evaluate and assess student understanding by assessing their summarization sheets. We will also have a discussion of the article. 

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Summarization Sheet:
 

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References: 

 

“Women’s History Month” (National Geographic Article) https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/womens-history-month 

 

Attia, Andie: “Swinging into Summarization” https://aka0029.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/reading-to-learn