top of page
Image by Meg Jerrard

Analyzing the Alligator

Lesson design project for the reading stage of reading to learn (Reading to Learn): ideas for teaching comprehension strategies with challenging texts.


Rationale: The goal of reading is to comprehend the text that is being read. Sometimes, we find that comprehension is a barrier during reading. Summarization is a strategy that can be used to allow students to take the important information from a passage and remember it for further use while not focusing on trivial information. The purpose of this lesson is to teach students how to summarize by asking themselves questions and remembering the important steps of summarization. 


Materials:

  • Paper/pencil, highlighters

  • Bookmark with summarization rules

    • Delete or mark out information that isn’t important

    • Highlight the import information

    • Ignore the small details

  • Find an umbrella term for events that happen in the text

  • Form a topic sentence from the reading

  • Summarization checklist

  • Article: Class set of the American Alligator article

Procedures:

  1. Say: Today we are going to learn to summarize an article we read! We can remember what we read by summarizing. This means you will pick out the most significant details from the article. Let’s practice this skill by reading two articles! We will pick out the main idea and what information supports that idea by eliminating details we don’t need.

  2. Say: The rules of summarizing are on these special bookmarks (pass out bookmarks). You will refer to these rules while you are reading, but I will also write them on the board for you to see!

  3.  Say: After you read the first article, I want you to delete the information that isn’t important and highlight only what’s important. Then write down the main idea.

  4. Say: Remember the summary should be shorter than the article itself! Now I am going to give everyone an article about the American Alligator! (pass out copies and give book talk) Who in here has ever seen an alligator? Well we are going to learn all about the American Alligator today. Don’t forget we are summarization, so make sure you are keeping track of your bookmark rules to summarize the article in the end.

  5. (when students finish reading) Say: Now let’s go through and highlight what we think is the most important facts in this article! (call on different students to see what they highlighted) Now let’s create our topic sentence by answering the questions: what is it about? What is the main point? (students respond) Okay, you should now be able to begin writing your summaries using that information. (walk around the room to help)

6. Say:

 “American alligators live in the wild in the southeastern United States. You're most likely to spot them in Florida and Louisiana, where they live in rivers, lakes, ponds, swamps, bayous, and marshes. These reptiles are kind of clumsy on land, but they're built for life in the water. Great swimmers, they are equipped with webbed feet and strong tails that propel them through the water.”


“What parts of this paragraph are important? I think the parts that say, ‘American alligators live in the wild in the southeastern United States.’ and ‘They’re built for life in water.’ I will underline those parts of the paragraph, but I will cross out the part about alligators being great swimmers since we already have a fact about them being built for water. Now, let’s put those sentences together to make a topic sentence.


“So now that we’ve applied rules 1 and 2 of summarizing to this paragraph, I’m going to demonstrate how to use rule 3 and create a topic sentence using the parts I underlined. “American alligators live in the southeastern United States and spend most of their time in the water.”.


7. Say: “Let’s continue to pick out important points in each paragraph of the article. Find an umbrella term for the events that happen in the text. Now continue reading the article by yourself this time. Summarize as much as you can, highlighting important parts and marking through unimportant details. I’ll come around and check your work.”

8.  Say: “Now that we have summarized, let’s pick out a word we may have struggled with. The word I chose was “extinction”. Extinction means when all the animals in a group die and no longer exist anymore. Can someone give me a sentence using this word?

 9. Say: “Once you have finished reading and summarizing the article, using the main ideas and details you highlighted, write down a one paragraph summary of what you have learned. Once you’re done meet with you neighbor and discuss what you wrote.”


Comprehension Questions:

  1. What makes the American Alligator American?

  2. How are alligators such good swimmers?

  3. What makes female alligators gentle?

  4. How did American Alligators escape extinction?


Comprehension Checklist:

  • Did the students have a topic sentence for each paragraph?

  • Did students successfully delete unimportant information?

  • Did students successfully identify important information?

  • Did students use important information to make topic sentences?


References:

Murray, Bruce, Reading Genie, http://wp.auburn.edu/rdggenie/

 American Alligator, Kids National   Geographic, https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/animals/reptiles/american-alligator/

Northcutt, Sarah. “Swinging into Summarization” https://smn0016.wixsite.com/readinglessons/reading-to-learn

Reading to Learn: Intro
bottom of page