Intended target: 5th grade students
Objective: Students will be able to summarize a one-page passage of non-fiction text using the strategy of keep, delete, and substitute.
Anticipatory Set: Who knows about how long a movie is? For example, how long is “How to Train a Dragon”? (aprox. an hour and a half or more) After getting answers, ask students how long it would take them to retell the movie to a friend. (aprox. 5-10 minutes—about 1/10 of the time)
Procedure:
1. “We are going to leave to summarize an informational piece of text today using keep, delete, and substitute.”
2. Do a shared reading of the intended text. It should be a piece that is a low level for the average student. Look for the main ideas of the selection.
3. KEEP: Together as a class circle the key words. Suggested number of words is 1/10 of the entire selection. You are “keeping” 1/10 of the words.
4. Next, DELETE about ¼ of the circled words. Use a colored pencil or marker to cross them out. Look for words that are redundant.
5. Go through the selection again and DELETE ¼ of the original kept words to get about half the number of words circled. Leave only the words that really capture the essence of the text.
6. Then have students find any words lists where subordinate terms can be used, such as fish for salmon, halibut, and perch. SUBSTITUTE the words for more general terms where appropriate.
7. Last, either write the topic sentence found in the original text or create one. Use the circled key words remaining and subordinate terms to express the main ideas of the selection in a few sentences. Final summary should be approximately 1/10 the length of the original text.
Follow this plan as a shared reading activity a few times before asking students to complete this independently. Students can use any non-fiction text to practice summarizing effectively.
This lesson comes from Classroom Instruction That Works by Marzano page 32-33 and adapted from an identifiable paper in my files. :)
This lesson is very detailed, and seems like it would be successful to try with the students. I think the strategy that Marzano puts there is very useful, and I think that students will be able to use that strategy to tell what information is really important and which is not.
ReplyDeleteI hope that the lesson went well. Thanks for it.
It did go well. One thing I found with 5th grade leveled text is that they need to be generous with the number of words they circle to "Keep" in the first pass. Because the text is fairly simple, not circling enough words leads to an incomplete summary.
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