Summarizing

This week, our lesson had us reading examples of persuasive letters and summarizing our reading. "In the plans", Ms. Leom thought it would take about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty minutes, to read the article and four persuasive letters, with another five minutes to summarize what we read. Her feedback from our discussion, indicated that the students did NOT remember summarizing or main idea, so we adjusted our lesson and the expectations to review these skills.

First, we reviewed our summarizing skill. We made a list of the "tools" we could use to summarize.

Then we reread and skimmed the article and letters, using our tools to record our thinking.

Students used sticky notes at their spots to record their findings

Ms. Leom's class's findings

Mr. Greninger's class's findings

When we were finished recording our notes, we created a short one to three sentence summary of the most important points of what we read.

We also had to talk about how we would USE what we did in class. "If your parent asks, 'What did you do in school today?', and you are unable to answer, you could summarize what we read in class today.

Every day is a learning opportunity in fourth grade, some days, teachers learn something new too, and we review and adjust to be successful!