Lesson Name: Summary of Informational/NonfictionEstimated Timeframe: See Suggested Pacing Below
Grading Period & Unit: 1st 9Wks,Unit 2,Arc 1Grade Level: 3rd Grade
This lesson is appropriate for both Monolingual and Dual Language teachers.
Monolingual Pacing: Day 1 – Engage and SE Focus Lesson #1 (Teacher Model), partners complete
Activity 1.
Day 2 - SE Focus Lesson #2, Teacher models Activity 2 and creates Summary Criteria
Chart.
Day 3 – Review Summary Criteria Chart and students complete Activity 2.
Day 4 –Teacher teaches how to have collaborative conversations while sharing. Partners share and compare summaries. Teacher leads closure discussion. Students write in their WTL Journals. Students share journal entries.
Dual Language Pacing: Day 1 – Engage and beginning of reading SE Focus Lesson #1 (Teacher Model).
Day 2 – Finish SE Focus Lesson (Teacher Model) and partners complete Activity 1.
Writing (WTL Journal or Writing Process; see DL CRM.)
Day 3 –SE Focus Lesson #2 (Teacher models Activity 2 and creates Summary Criteria
Chart.) Students complete Activity 2. (WTL Journal or Writing Process; see
DL CRM.)
Day 4 – Teacher teaches how to have productive conversations while sharing. Partner
groups share and compare summaries. (WTL Journal or Writing Process; see
DL CRM.)
Day 5 – Teacher leads closure discussion. Students write in their WTL Journals.
Students share journal entries.
Lesson ComponentsLesson Objectives: Students will summarize a nonfiction text in a logical order using a graphic organizer, text features and text organization to determine important ideas.
Language Objectives: The students will listen to peers and teacher, paraphrase what they are saying, and explain their own thinking effectively while discussing the articles.
Prior Learning: Students can understand, make inferences and draw conclusions about the structure and elements of nonfiction and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Standards(Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills:
3.19ELAR TEKS Figure 19/Reading Comprehension /Skills. Students use a flexible range of metacognitive reading skills in both assigned and independent reading to understand an author’s message. Students will continue to apply earlier standards with greater depth in increasingly more complex texts as they become self-directed, critical readers.
3.F19(E) summarize information in text, maintaining meaning and logical order
College and Career Readiness:
Locate explicit textual information, draw complex inferences, and analyze and evaluate the information within and across texts of varying lengths.
- Use text features and graphics to form an overview of informational texts and to determine where to locate information.
- Draw and support complex inferences from text to summarize and draw conclusions…
Essential Questions:
- How do text features help us to identify and summarize main ideas in nonfiction articles?
- How does summarizing the main events/ ideas/ facts in an article help a reader understand the text?
- What strategies help us to summarize a text, including only the most important information?
Vocabulary / Essential:
informational, nonfiction, summary, summarize,paraphrase, logicalorder, main idea, reporter’s formula, comprehend, comprehension, graphic organizer, evidence (text), metacognition
Lesson Preparation / Materials: blank paper (preferably legal size or 11 x 17), pencils, sticky notes
Recommended English Texts / Recommended Spanish Texts
- Texas Treasures: Time For Kidspgs. 38 and 39 “The Car of The Future?” (If you don’t have enough copies of the TFK issue, make copies of the article.)
- TFK: Exploring Nonfiction Level 3 – “Energy: Renewable and Nonrenewable Sources”.
- Texas Tesoros: Time For Kids, pgs.38 and 39 “El Carro del Futuro”
- Texas Tesoros:Time For Kids,pgs. 102 and 103 “Problemas con el agua”
- Texas Tesoros: Time For Kids, pgs. 110 and 111“Bienvenidos a la India”
Anchors of Support /
- Vocabulary anchor chart with Tier II word introduction (and reference during reading): element, fuel, pollution, and environment.
Differentiation strategies
Keep in mind that differentiation does not discriminate. : ) These strategies often cross over to meet multiple student needs. Use your students’ needs as a guide. / For the individual/pair work, be sure to have plenty of books available for the range of independent reading levels of your students (addressing readers below, on, and above grade level).
Special Education: If needed, read the student-selected story to or with students and allow them to verbalize their summary responses while you write it. Incorporate picture clues into the graphic organizer to help clarify each component. Allow for cooperative learning opportunities (pair them strategically). Provide large enough paper (for the student-folded graphic organizer) for the students to have ample space to write easily. Refer to the student’s IEP for other routinely offered accommodations.
English Language Learners: Define thevocabulary terms on the anchor chart and/or provide picture clues to match the vocabulary. Use TPR (Total physical response) movements for each of the vocabulary words. Allow plenty of cooperative learning opportunities to internalize new vocabulary. Example: The students can write a story with the teacher with the new vocabulary. Including Beginning, middle, and end. The story needs a sequence of events.
Extension for Learning: Ask students to use the graphic organizer for summary to pull important information from science or social studies texts. Have students use the nonfictionsummary chart to summarize a magazine article or another piece of non-fiction text.
21st Century Skills
/ CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING: Use Systems Thinking
Analyze how parts of a whole interact with each other to produce overall outcomes in complex systems.
-In groups, have students write a news report about a topic of interest (pollution, endangered animals, water conservation) using the “Reporter’s formula” graphic organizer. Have them use a digital device (such as a digital recorder, the computer, an iPod, the Innovation Station) to record their video. The video should include the most important details from the “Reporter’s formula”.
English Language Proficiency Standards: Mandated by Texas Administrative Code (19 TAC §74.4), click on the link for English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) to support English Language Learners.
Lesson Cycle
Engage / CREATIVE LEARNING STRATEGY – ART TALK
Teacher posts the picture of an event that relates to the “Car of the Future” TFK article.Ask questions about the picture to guide student inquiry around cars and pollution. Record important details on the board or on chart paper.
- What is happening in this picture?
- What do you see that makes you think that?
- What more can you find?
- Where do you think this happening? When?
- How do you think cars contribute to pollution?
Creative Learning Strategy – Teacher in Role
Explain to students that you are going to play the role of a reporter. You will play a news reporter that needs their expert help to identify important details and summarize an event. Count down from three to zero to “go into role.” When you get to zero, students should be sitting in their seats as “expert reporters.”
BREAKING NEWS!- Acting as a reporter, announce that you have breaking news for the class. The only problem is that you haveforgotten the important details about the event in the photo.
Ask students to help you remember the details by asking questions that will allow youto remember and summarize the breaking news event in a brief and concise report.
- Think aloud and state that you know that in order to summarize, you need to include only the most important details.
- Explain how you know that reporters use a formula. Ask the students for questions that can help you summarize the event.
- The students volunteer questions to help you summarize. Point out and recordthe question words for the Reporter’s Formula: who? what? where? when? why? how?
- Ask students to come up with a headline for the report and discuss how headlines or headings, titles, and subheadings help us decide what the main topic of an event or article is about. These ideas should be included in the summary. The details should support the main topic – the who and/or what the article is mainly about.
Ask the students why summarizing is important and guide the discussion about how to generate a good summary.
Provide the following guiding questions for students’ discussion:
- Why don’t you tell EVERYTHING that happened from the event, picture, etc.?
- How do you determine what is important to include? (Reporter’s Formula: who? what? where? when? why? how?)
- What parts of the article should a summary include? (The most important ideas from the beginning, middle, and end.)
- How do we use the organization of the text to help us choose the most important ideas? For example, authors of informational text organize common ideas into paragraphs or sections, often with headings or subheadings. If we discover those big ideas for each section, we will have the most important ideas.
Lesson stages / SE Focus Lesson / Whole Group:
- Introduce the article “The Car of the Future?” that you will be reading with the class. Each student will receive a copy of the article and the graphic organizer. Model your thinking by referring to and connecting the picture that you used for the engage activity. For example, “We were looking at a picture of air pollution,and it reminds me how cars pollute the air. Let’s read to find out how “The Car of the Future” affects our environment. “
- The teacher will focus students’ attentionto the title/headings, subheadings, and photos to make a prediction about the article. The students will share their predictions at their table and select a speaker to share with the class.
- Preview the Nonfiction Summary anchor chart with the class, identifying the elements of the nonfiction text that they will use to summarize the text.
- For this activity, we will only be summarizing the first page of the article.Begin reading the introduction and first section, What are Fuel Cells? As you read, stop and model your thinking as you try to determine the most important information from the section. “I know ______is important because it tells us what this paragraph is mostly about.”
- After you’ve finished reading, model writing on the Informational (Nonfiction)Summary Graphic Organizer. Ask, who is this section of the article mainly about? What is the most important event in the section? Where is the main event taking place? When is the event happening? How is this happening? Why is this important? Remind students that these important details should sum up each of the sections of the first part of the text.
- Continue this think aloud modeling as you complete the rest of the chart. Model for your students how you adjust your thinking as you work through the chart and cross out or add any information that is necessary (Note that sometimes all of the questions won’t be answered by the text. It depends on the text.)
- Explain that we have used the first part of the graphic organizer to determine and record what is important so that we can write a summary.
ACTIVITY 1 (Partner work):
Note: Partner work requires students to use a different color pencil within their writing to show proof of their contribution.
Allow students time to work whileyou circulate among the pairs, asking questions to check for deeper understanding.(Be sure to ask questions that require students to justify why they included certain details over other details.)
- Students will work with their partner to locate the most important information from the second section of the article, page 39. “Kind to the Environment.”
- First, they will read the section closely. Guide students to use the Reporter’s Formula to determine the most important details.
- As students agree on the details, they will continue to add the information to the graphic organizer.
SE Focus Lesson / Whole Group: (Part 2 – Synthesizing the details into a summary)
Model how to take the notes from the first part of the organizer to synthesize the most important ideas into a summary of the whole article. Explain to students that they will need to consider the following guidelines when writing a summary:
- Include the main topic of the book or article - Use the title to help
- Include the most important ideas related to the topic (Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?)
- Write the summary in logical order (balance beginning, middle, end and include ideas that reoccur throughout)
- Consider how the author organized ideas into sections with big ideas.
- Maintain the author’s message
- Discuss their responses to these questions…
- Before Summary Relay:
- What does the title or heading tell you about the article?
- What other information is provided in text features (photographs, captions, maps, charts, etc.)?
- How is the text organized into sections? Why did the author do this?
Note: Partner work requires students to use a different color pencil within their writing to show proof of their contribution.
Relay:
- Students will work with their partner to read a nonfiction article (Recommended article – TFK: Exploring Nonfiction Level 3 – “Energy: Renewable and Nonrenewable Sources”.)
- Give students 1 blank sheet of paper and ask them to fold it making 6 equal parts. The students will label each box with one question (Reporter’s Formula: who? what? where? when? why? how?)
- Once students finish reading the story, they will work collaboratively on the blank sheet of paper and begin answering the questions in the boxes by taking turns.
- Students will use these details to create a summary on an index card.
- When students are finished they will read the summary aloud to their partner to check for meaning and logical order.
The teacher will collect the first 4 summaries from the relay and label them a-d. The students will help rank the summaries according to criteria for nonfiction summary. Be sure to give your students clear expectations about how to havecollaborative conversations when comparing their work. (Take turns speaking, look at the person who is speaking, listen and reply, use a respectful tone. Give examples of respectful comments vs. negative or sarcastic comments.)
ACTIVITY 2 (Partner work or Independent):
The students will use the following guiding questions to direct their group discussions to rank the summaries :
- Does the summary include the main topic of the book or article? Use the title to help.
- Does the summary include the most important ideas related to the topic? (Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?)
- Is the summary written in logical order? (balance beginning, middle, end and include ideas that reoccur throughout)
- Does the summary consider how the author organized ideas into sections with subheadings?
- Does the summary maintain the author’s message?
Closure Activity / Journal Writing Reflection:
How is writing a nonfiction summary related to writing a narrative summary?
How would you test to see if you have a complete nonfiction summary?
Check for understanding (evaluation)
/ Formative:
- Formative assessment often continues well after the initial “summative” assessment. In this case, it is valuable for students to continue using this graphic organizer as one option for building their summarizing skills. Have copies available in a reading center, along with other graphic organizers your students have worked with.
- Turn ‘n’ talk
- Summary ranking
- Journal/ Writing Reflection
- Students choose another nonfiction text at their independent reading level to summarize using the graphic organizer.
- Complete and use the Reporter’s Formula to summarize the text.
Austin ISD Revised 06/24/14