Summarizing Lesson for Children

Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathman  is about a police man, Officer Buckle, and his dog, Gloria. Officer Buckle and Gloria visits schools and give safety tips to the children. Before Gloria came along, Officer was never paid attention too. Sometimes, the students would start snoring. Even the adults did not pay attention to Officer Buckle. Once Gloria started accompanying Officer Buckle to the schools, the students started paying more attention. They would get so excited when Officer Buckle spoke. They would cheer, clap, and laugh. Officer Buckle was so happy that the students found his speeches fun and exciting. One day, Officer Buckle watched Gloria and himself on TV delivering a speech to a school. Officer Buckle found out that the students were not clapping for him but for Gloria!! During his speeches, Gloria would do neat tricks which resulted in the students reactions. Officer Buckle got so mad, he did not want to go to anymore schools. The schools still wanted Gloria to come though, so when Gloria went to the schools by herself, she was lonely and the students did not learn any safety tips. This resulted in an accident with a student and teacher. The following day, Officer Buckle received letters. The students said they missed him and told him about the accident. Officer Buckle then realized that Gloria and him are a team. Since then, he tells students that one of the most important safety tips is to "always stick with your buddy."

This is a great story for students to summarize. It has a clear main idea and moral. This book would be easy for the students to explain what happens because the book is not only easy to read but they can use their schema. Using their schema allows them to more easily identify the moral and main idea of the story. We found two fun activities that the students can do in the classroom at http://reading.ecb.org/teacher/summarizing/summarize_lessonplans.html. One activity is a fortune teller (what used to be called a Cootie Catcher). The template can be found on the website. The students would build the fortune teller and be able play with their classmates or themselves. For example: The student would pick a tab, after pulling the tab up, their would be a question like "Who are the main characters?" and the student would have to answer it. Each tab would ask something different that would help the students be able to summarize the story. The second fun activity we found was a paper bag report. Each student would be given a paper lunch bag. On the front of the bag, the students would draw an important scene from the book. They would also put the title and author on this side. One the back of the bag, the students would write the main characters and conflict and resolution. Finally, the students would put items inside the bag that represents the story.

 Cat Kong by Dav Pilkey is an excellent descriptive tale of adventure and discovery. The story follows along with King Kong’s plot, but is substituted with a cat for the monster and mice for the people. Cat Kong is captured by the mice and transported back to the city of Mousopolis and is put on display. He escapes the captors and rampages through the city until he falls from a very tall skyscraper to his death.

The text follows along very well with the images. The text turns out to be very descriptive which gives the students a multitude of new words to infer from the images associated with them. While reading the text, you begin to see these conversations between the mice and parts that are not shown with the images, which leads to the visualizing the parts of text that are not shown through the pictures.

While considering options on books to use for the visualizing and inferring lesson, the best way we could think of, was to use a picture book that had descriptive text. This would give a good basis on unfamiliar vocabulary, because the text would be more advanced. The pictures are very detailed and showed exactly what was going on in the story. This is exactly what we achieved with this book, and it follows along well with taking background knowledge of the reader and applying it to the visualizing and inferring process to obtain deeper meaning of the text through descriptive images and vocabulary.

Making Connections

Sophie got so angry when her sister took her Gorilla!!! AHHHHHHHH!!! Not only did her gorilla get taken, but when her sister snatched her toy away, she fell over a truck. She is so angry, she wants to stomp and roar. She feels like she is about to explode. Instead of doing something she might regret or get in trouble for, Sophie goes outside to climb her favorite tree. There, she is able to calm down. She did not know how to handle her anger, but she removes herself from the situation and finds comfort in something she enjoys.

This book is great for introducing and practicing inferring about text. Teachers can ask questions like, "Look at the picture of Sophie, how do you think she is feeling?Why?" and as the story progresses, teachers can ask "How do you think Sophie will react?", " What will she do next?", and "Do you think Sophie is making the right decision. Why?" Teachers can then ask students to remember a time when they got angry and how they handled the situation.

It is important for children to be able to be able to identify what they are feeling. Once they are able to identify the feeling, they are able to problem solve a lot easier. This entire lesson relates to GPS standards SSKE4 and ELACCKW8.  A cute activity that could be done with this book is Charades. A student will pull an emotion form the bucket the teacher hands them. The student then has to act out the emotion. The rest of the students in the class have to guess the emotion based on facial expression and physical movements.