Reading Strategy Lesson

Teacher: Mikayla Battjes

Grade Level: First Grade

Date: October 10
Format: • teacher-led
• individual
• teacher-led
• individual

Strategy: Summarizing and synthesizing

Objective/Purpose/ • Use summarizing and synthesizing reading strategies to
Instructional Goals: increase comprehension of the story
• Model strategies to encourage the student to summarize
and synthesize on their own
• Uses key details of the story to help the student recall the
story
• Connect emotions/thoughts to the text to make it more
meaningful

Texts/Resources/Materials:
Assessment(s):
• Book
• Summarizing worksheet
• Printer paper (5+ sheets)
• Crayons
• Pencil
• Vocabulary cards of words pre-taught
• Student’s responses to summarizing worksheet
• Oral responses to questions throughout the book
 Brief outline (Activities):1. Use the first 5 minutes to do exercises
1. jumping jacks
2. high knees
3. skips
4. grapevine
5. situps
6. pushups
7. plank
2. Review Little Dog Lost that was read last week.
3. Teacher pre-teaches vocabulary [working with words] about
summaries
a. summary
b. character
c. plot
Allow for brain breaks every d. resolution
10 minutes 4. Teacher tells story with a lot of details and a few main ideas
Teacher asks student to summarize her story
5. Explain that a summary is short and sweet and should be no
longer than a couple of sentences. Included should be
a. main character(s)
b. what the character(s) is doing
c. the problem the character(s) runs into
d. the resolution to the problem
Use teacher’s story as a practice summary to model the
structure.
6. brain break
7. Teacher pre-teaches [guided reading] text with the following
questions:
a. What do we think this book is about based on the book
cover? (Synthesize)
8. Teacher reads The Watermelon Seed together
9. Teacher reads aloud text, using during-reading [guided
reading] questions:
What has happened so far?
Who are our main characters?
What does the character want?
What problem does our character have?
How is our character trying to solve the problem?
What do you think this book is about now? (Synthesize)

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 Teacher asks students these questions repeatedly at different key
intervals to model the summarizing structure
10. brain break
11. Teacher employs post-reading [guided reading] strategy of
having student make a summarizing booklet
A. What do you think that book was about? (Synthesize)
B. After reading the story, talk about a few key points of
the story. After discussing it, have the student draw a
picture of each point they think of on a piece of paper.
Each idea should be on a separate sheet. After they
have finished, you can present them their “book”.
They can now summarize the book using the pictures
they have just drawn.
12. After the student has finished the summarizing book, have
them summarize their book using the pictures
13. Brain break
14. If time, teacher will allow student to read another book offered
on their own and summarize and synthesize the story orally.
[self-selected reading] (full release)
NOTES *Use this area to jot Summarizing
down any notes about the Summarizing forces our brain to recall the story in our own words
strategy or lesson. which will allow us to remember it better. It encourages us to use
the most important details to briefly explain the story. This strategy
increases comprehension because it focuses on the main idea of
what happened in the story without many details.

This strategy can be used across all genres, but will look differently.
For fiction books/stories it will follow the pattern shown in this
lesson. For non-fiction/informational texts it will focus on who/what
the text is about and the purpose of the person/thing.

Synthesizing
Synthesizing makes the story personal. Synthesizing focuses on
thoughts and emotions that are brought into the story which makes
it connect interpersonally to the student.

This strategy is used to increase comprehension of a text by

having the students make connections emotionally to the story.
Once emotions are tied to a text, it becomes easier to remember.

Other
*Brain breaks/opening exercises should be used often to keep the
student on track. The student has a hard time staying focused and
staying still so hopefully these breaks will help with that. I also plan
to change location and lay on our stomachs facing the wall,
hopefully this will be less distracting for the student.

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Summary

Character

Plot

Resolution !5