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Science
Summaries are the Bomb!
Designed
by: Katie Howard, Caughman Road Elementary
Grade
Level:
Fourth Grade
Subject: Reading
Time
Frame:
One fifty minute Session
1)
Core Curriculum Objective(s):
Students will demonstrate comprehension of a text
selection by writing about what is read. (4-CM12)
2)
Overview:
In this lesson students will read a University of
Virginia interactive frog dissection article in classroom
teams. The
teams will be required to complete a KWL chart and write a
one paragraph summary of the article to demonstrate
comprehension of their particular section of the article.
Teams will present their findings in writing and in
an informal presentation to other classroom teams.
All teams will be required to evaluate the team
that presents before them, in addition to the teachers
evaluation. Any
science article could be used to teach this lesson if the
frog dissection article isn't of particular interest to
your class.
3)
Resources:
Teacher-
Computer, Averkey, TV monitor, copies of each
section of the UV Interactive Frog Dissection article,
extra non-fiction science articles that are brief, posters
or long chart paper, construction paper
Students-
paper, pencils, crayons, markers
4)
Assessment:
Note:
students will use the assessment to guide them through the
assignment and to evaluate teams that present)
Criteria
for scoring is at the end of the assessment.
| I.
Team Work: |
| a.
Did the team establish jobs such as,
Material handler, note taker, illustrator, noise
patrol, editors, proffers, scriptor, etc...? |
yes |
no |
| b.
Did all team members do their assigned job? |
yes |
no |
| c.
Describe what your team liked best about
this activity.
|
| d.
Describe what your team liked least about
this activity and what your
team would have changed about the activity.
|
| e.
Did all members of the team contribute to
the evaluation of other
teams? |
yes |
no |
|
II.
KWL Chart |
| a.
Did your team complete a KWL chart? |
yes |
no |
| b.
Were there at least two items listed under
each section of the KWL
chart? |
yes |
no |
| c.
Were the items on the KWL chart accurate
according to the
information contained in the article? |
yes |
no |
| III.
Presentation |
| a.
Did your team present your summary of the
article clearly so that the team listening
now knows the information in the article as
if they had read it themselves? |
yes |
no |
| b.
Did the team you presented to seem to be
interested in what your team was presenting? |
yes |
no |
| IV.
Summary |
| a.
Did your team have a plan for the summary
such as a list of important information, a web, or
a map? |
yes |
no |
| b.
Does the first sentence of your summary
state the main idea of the summary? |
yes |
no |
| c.
Are the only the most important pieces of
information from the article in your summary? |
yes |
no |
| d.
Is your team's summary in a logical order? |
yes |
no |
| e.
Do all of your sentences in the summary
support the main idea of the summary as stated in
the topic (first sentence)? |
yes |
no |
| f.
Is your summary only one paragraph long? |
yes |
no |
| g.
Did your team proofread your summary so that it is
free of errors in spelling, punctuation, and
capitalization? |
yes |
no |
Scoring-
add up all of the yes answers and make sure your team used
complete sentences to answer the questions that required
more than just a yes/no answer.
If your team has:
14-15
yes responses=A
12-13
yes responses=B
10-11
yes responses=C
8-9
yes responses=D
0-7
yes responses=F
7)
Instructional Activities:
Begin the lesson with a large group viewing of the
University of Virginia site found on the student tab of
the Richland Clicks web site (scroll down to the bottom
where the article may be found).
Remember
that you do not have to use the Interactive Frog
Dissection article. I
choose this article because I wanted to integrate
technology and science into reading and writing.
Also, there are five sections in the one article
and I thought this would be a good number of teams to
break my class into for the work assigned.
At this point you should just skim the exciting
places students can find on the Richland Clicks including
all types of topics.
Try to get the students into this lesson with the
great graphics of the frog being dissected or perhaps you
could bring in a real frog to elicit interest in the
lesson.
Have
the students count off 1,2,3,4,5.
Tell all of the students that counted off as #1 to
work together, all students that counted off #2 will work
together etc..... There should be a total of five groups.
Once the students are grouped and seated together
pass out previously made copies of the UV article on Frog
Dissection and copies of the assessment.
Point out to the students the five sections of the
dissection article and allow a few minutes for teams to
decide which article their team would like to use for the
assignment. Once
the teams know their assigned section of the article go
through the assessment taking any questions from the
students that need clarification about the assignment.
If
your students have never written a summary this would be a
good time to go over the basic of summary writing.
You may want to have these steps written on the
board:
Writing
a Summary
1.
Skim the article first, then reread carefully
paying attention to boldfaced and italicized print.
2.
List the main points on paper.
3.
Check your list with the article to make sure you
haven't missed anything.
4.
Use your own words (except for keywords) to write a
summary of the article.
Do not get too detailed.
Stay in order to write and write clearly.
Make a final sentence that concludes the article.
5.
Go back over your summary to proofread.
If
your students aren't familiar with reading strategy KWL
(Know, Want, Learn) then you may want to show them the
steps for using this reading strategy before they read the
articles. Draw a three column chart on the board and title
each column with the following;
K
What do I know? |
W
What do I want to know? |
L
What did I learn? |
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Once
you feel comfortable that the students know what is
expected of them you may want to set a timer for fifty
minutes and tell the students that they should agree on
who will do the different parts of the assignment so that
one person isn't caring the work load of the whole group.
(see assessment for jobs ideas the students may
want to consider)
When
time is up your students should be experts on at least two
sections of the article and the teams could then present
the information to another class, the principal, or to an
interested group of parents. |
