Reading to Learn

Doggie Duties!

Rationale: Comprehension is the final, and most important, step in a student’s reading development. If a student is reading for comprehension, they are no longer spending time decoding words, but now are focused on understanding the message of the text. A great way to test a student’s comprehension is to have them summarize a book that they have already read. In this lesson, students will practice summarization as a strategy for reading comprehension. The students will summarize the text by only using important information from the text. Students will use the following summarization rules: mark out information that is not important or repeated, find and highlight important information, form a topic sentence, and find an umbrella term for the events that happen in the text. The teacher will model how to detect important information that is needed to write a summary.

Materials:

Paper and pencil for each student
Highlighters for each student
Individual copies of the book “Doggie Duties” by David and Patricia Armentrout
Summarization checklist for each student (see below)
Assessment checklist (see below)
Comprehension quiz (see below)

Procedures:

Say “Raise your hand if you have ever read an article or a book and recommended it to a friend. (Pause and let students raise their hand) do you read them the whole book, or do you just tell them the important parts of the book? Right! You only tell them the important parts of the story. When you only tell them the important parts of the story, this is called summarizing. Summarization is a very important strategy that good readers use to comprehend what they have read. If you are able to summarize a book, then it tells me that you understand what you have read.”
Say “Before we begin, I want to talk about some important words that we will use in the text that we're about to read. These words are loyal, nutrient, and veterinarian. The first word we're going to go over is loyal. To be loyal means that you display constant belief and trust in someone or something. What does it mean when a dog is loyal? (Wait for students to reply). now I want you to pull out a piece of paper and complete this sentence that I'm going to write on the board using the word loyal. (A dog is loyal because ____________). The second word is nutrient. Nutrient needs something needed to stay strong and healthy. For example, a carrot is a nutrient for our eyes. If I say carrots are a nutrient for our eyes, what does that mean? Now I want you to complete this sentence using the word nutrient. (Write on board “A carrot is a nutrient because _________________”). Our last word is veterinarian. A veterinarian is a person trained to treat injured or sick animals. if I say a veterinarian helped my dog today, what does that mean? Now I want you to complete the sentence using the word veterinarian. (Write on board “A veterinarian _____________).
When we want to summarize a passage, we read only a little bit at a time. When we finish reading that small part, we look back and figure out what the most important parts are. We cross out ideas that are not important to the main idea. We must be very selective in choosing the most important information. Now that we know what summarization is, and why it is important, I'm going to show you how to do it period to do this we will read a book called “Doggie Duties. Do you guys know the effort that goes into raising a dog? I have a dog at home, and I raise her all by myself. She's a lot of work and more than I expected! She needs food and water and to go outside to relieve herself. But there is also a lot more that goes into raising a dog from a puppy to a grown-up. In this book, we're going to find out what it takes to raise a puppy. We are going to read the first four pages of our book and summarize what we read.
1. “Do you know why people say a dog is a man's best friend? One reason might be that dogs are loyal. They love their owners unconditionally. Dogs are also pack animals. Just like people, they need to be part of a group, or family. Sadly, many dogs do not have a family. Their home is an animal shelter period when you're looking for a four-legged friend adopting a shelter dog is a great choice. Pack leaders have responsibilities. So, besides running around the house with your pooch playing tag, you also have doggie duties. Your daily duties include feeding, exercising, and yes, cleaning up after your dog. At least once a year you need to take your pet to the doctor, or veterinarian. Dogs need to see a vet for regular medical checkups and vaccines that will help keep them free from disease.”
These couple of pages gave us some great information! I'm going to use a highlighter to highlight the important parts. The first page tells us that dogs are loyal and that they want to be part of a family just like we do. I'm going to highlight that part because it tells us what our book is about. I'm going to use a pencil to mark out the rest of the paragraph because it is not as important as are highlighted section.
Now that we have a good idea of how to summarize, let's summarize the next section together. Pack leaders have responsibilities. So, besides running around the house with your pooch playing tag you also have doggie duties. your daily duties include feeding, exercising, and yes cleaning up after them. I'm going to highlight my daily duties which include feeding exercising and cleaning up after them. Do you agree that this is the most important part of the page? Next record to cross out the unimportant things on the page which is everything that is not in highlight.
“Now that I have modeled for you and we have done it together, you are going to work on can summarizing on your own. I want you to read the rest of the pages and highlight the important parts. Once you have finished come to me and get a summary checklist. This will help you write a summary of the article using the highlighted information. Do not worry if it looks short, it is supposed to be! The point of a summary is so you get a short version of something. Once you have finished, I want you to share your summer with a neighbor. If there are any differences between you and your neighbors’ summaries, I want you to discuss them.”

Summary Checklist

Did I……

____ Write my topic sentence?

____ Find Supporting details to help answer my question?

____ Remove unimportant information by marking it out?

____ Remove repeated ideas?

____ Create a 3-5 sentence summary?

Assessment Materials:

Name:_________

Dogs are loyal to who?
What do you do for a dog every day?
A Veterinarian does what for a dog?
How do vaccines help dogs?
If a dog doesn’t have a home where does it live?

Assessment Checklist:

Did the student…..

_____Collected important information

_____ Ignored trivia and examples in summary

_____ Significantly reduced the text from the original

_____ Sentences brought ideas together from each paragraph

_____ Sentences organized coherently into essay form

References:

“Doggie Duties” by David and Patricia ArmenTrout

https://kmp0054.wixsite.com/lessondesigns/reading-to-learn-design