Teaching Summarizing with Narrative Texts in Third Grade (REL West)

In this video, you will see Teresa Malone and her third grade students engaged in summarizing narrative texts and using the summaries to discuss the two texts. The video is designed to support your learning about specific recommended instructional practices from the Improving Reading Comprehension in Kindergarten through third grade practice guide. Teach students how to use reading comprehension strategies and teach students to identify and use the text's organizational structure to comprehend, learn, and remember content. There are four sections in the video. First, Ms. Malone introduces the activity and the summarizing strategy. Then, she models the comprehension strategy summarizing with a mentor text. The third section of the video shows guided practice with Ms. Malone working with a small group of students and independent practice with pairs of students working together to summarize a second narrative. Finally, you will see how students use their summaries to discuss the similarities between the two narratives. Today, um we are going to go ahead and we're going to be talking about summarizing. Raise your hand if you remember what summarizing is. Ooh, I like it. I like it. Our brains are on. Awesome. Let's talk about summarizing for just a second. So, why is it important to be able to summarize? So, your story can turn out to be good. Okay. Sam? To remember stuff. Oh, to remember stuff. Okay, good. Okay. So, you could make pictures in your mind of what the story could look like. And summarizing is you're going to have, right, three or four steps going from the beginning of our story, the middle of our story, and then the end of our our We don't want every single detail. So, if you want to be thinking about this, right? As I'm reading, we've got our uh somebody wanted but so that. So, you're thinking to yourself, "Hmm, as I'm listening to Ms. Malone, what might I be able to put in here?" On Saturday, the animal shelter is filled with voices. Dogs scratch at their doors, baying and yelping, but in a large wire enclosure, the kitties meow softly. The dog area smells musty, but the kitty pen smells sweet, like alfalfa. Hmm, lots of description here. Are you starting to see it in your head? Yeah. Yeah? Now's the time I want you to help me a little bit. I'm going to see if I can answer our questions, right? Because we have to use our strategy so that we start working on our summary, right? So, our first one we have is somebody, right? So, who is the main character? Who's the main character? Can you tell me? Annie. Annie, okay. And Annie is blind. Yeah, so Annie's blind. We found out that she was blind. What did the character want? What did the character want, Jenabelle? She wanted a kitten, but there's too many to choose. Absolutely. To summarize, right? Once we have our we've gotten all of our evidence out of our text, Annie was um or Annie was a girl that wanted to get um wanted to have a little kitten, right? But there was too many to choose from at the shelter, right? Um how did she think thought she was going to solve the problem? She was going to take them home or the big cat, right? Look at all the kittens, make a decision, and she ended up choosing um Sammy because why? She went with her heart. Her heart. We're going to work on the someone together right now. Who is the main Can you say it with a louder? Who is the main character? Okay, or who are the main characters? Okay, so take your text and see I want you to find your evidence. Who Who's the someone in our story? What did they want? Do I have to highlight? Yeah, find your text cuz then you got to be able to write it down here. Did you find it here? Yeah. Okay. So he he wanted Okay, and then what does it say in your text? I looked eyes with the fish as I traffic of food into his chin. It's not fair, I said continued I said continuing to complain to Jane. Everyone else has a dog. Someone was a boy and dog the fish. You should just write a boy cuz that's Yeah. Cuz it doesn't say a boy and dog the fish. And well the boy wanted a dog or at least a cat, but he instead got a fish from his parents. He tried to train the fish. This This is the end of the story cuz they became best friends. best friends best friends So what is static? So is static. Let's find out what it means. Like you're correct. But he did try to train There you go, right? That's something we can remember when we're doing our writing. What's our strategy again class? Somebody wanted but so then All right, perfect. So we always fall back to our strategy for our summarizing, right? Who can help me with the the someone? Adrian. A boy or the narrator. I love how you said the word narrator, right? Because now you know exactly who's doing the talking, right? And whose point of view it's at. What did the character want? Caden, do you remember what did the character want? Um the boy wanted a dog. Yeah, the boy wanted a dog or A dog or a cat. Oh, or a cat. That's right. Um what was the problem? What was our boy struggling with? What was What was going on? Natalia? Um me and Sam put the problem was that he the fish wouldn't do tricks on his command. In the end, what was the boy What did the boy think? Did Did he think the same at the beginning and the end or did he What happened? Lily? Uh he thought different at the end because he taught the uh fish tricks. So, he's kind of like a dog. Yeah, so he's happy with He's happy with the fish, right? All right, so if we're pulling it all together, right? So, help me. A boy wanted a dog or a cat. But he got a fish. He got a fish, right? He tried to train the fish like a dog. Okay, he tried to train the fish like a dog. Perfect. Um Braden. What ended up happening? Then the fish actually kind of turned into a dog with the behaviors. Correct. Exactly. So, in a way he got it. So, what did he end up naming the fish? Dog. Dog, right? So, let's start talking about um our pets. Do you guys remember what we were reading about yesterday? Mm yeah, so we were talking about um different pets that people have. And then you shared with me pets that you might have. Pets in your community or in your family, right? Um so, why do you think that um people have pets? Olivia? Um I think why people can be lonely a lot of times, and they can adopt a pet to make them feel less lonely. Mhm. I like where you're going with that. Sam? I agree with Olivia. I love that sentence. Go ahead, keep going. How do you agree with her? Because some people do feel lonely. Like their pet could be a friend. Oh, a friend. I like that, too. Okay, one more. Micah? Pets keep people comfort. So, what I hear you saying is that pets can be helpful. They can be a friend. They can bring comfort, right? And even Jenabelle said a lot of people they feel they feel bad because they can't help themselves in the shelter, right? So, they think they can go and help out with them, okay? Um okay, hands down. Um out of all those things we were that you were talking to me about, um it makes me start thinking of the stories we had yesterday. Do you remember the stories that we read? A fish named dog. Um yeah, a fish named dog. And then what was the What was the other story that I read before? Annie was blind and she got a cat. Annie, right? Was blind, she had a cat. That's right. Um can you turn to your elbow partner? We'll go about a minute or so. Um why do you think that um those two stories, how do they relate? How is it different with um the boy and the fish with Annie and the kitten, okay? So, talk to your partner about that for just a little minute, and I'm going to come around and listen to you. Annie, she wanted a kitten, but she couldn't decide. So, she got Sammy cuz she followed her heart. And he the boy taught the fish tricks so he could be a good pet, like a dog. Yeah, he trained him kind of like a dog. So, so like they both made a decision and they were both happy with it. As I was kind of walking through, I could hear you saying I heard Janabelle say, "So." I heard Makai say, "Then." That was really good. You just kept You kept saying your sentence. So, it really sounded like a summary. When you guys are using your strategy, I can see how it's flowing. I can see you getting the ideas in your head and then you're saying them to each other. Okay. So, if I look at those two stories, right? And I think of I think of Annie with the kitty and then I think of the boy with um the fish named dog, right? Do you see any similarities to the two stories? What do they want? What do you think really deep down? What do you think that the boy wants and the Annie wants? Andrea? Uh some company. Oh, yeah. All those things you guys said at the beginning, right? They They want to have somebody to love, someone to love them, right? Bring them comfort, right? Isn't that what your pets do for you when you're at home, right? You can hug them. Some of you're reading 20 minutes at night to them, which is amazing. In this video, you saw how Ms. Malone taught her students how to use the reading comprehension strategy of summarizing to support a discussion of two narrative texts. Her teaching utilized several teaching strategies for two of the recommendations in the improving reading comprehension in kindergarten through third grade practice guide. As described in recommendation one, at several points in the lesson, Ms. Malone reviewed with students the purpose and structure of a summary. Ms. Malone also used a gradual release of responsibility to give students practice using the summarizing strategy more independently either in the small group or with a partner. For recommendation two, Ms. Malone used the somebody wanted but so then approach to help students identify the elements of the narrative text and connect the parts to create a summary. The next day, Ms. Malone's students were to use their summaries to discuss why the main characters from each of the two narrative texts wanted a pet. Based on this lesson, students went on to write opinion pieces about whether pets should be allowed in school.