Summarizing Asthma Using About-Point!

Reading to Learn

Hannah Shelton 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rationale:

The objective of this lesson is to teach readers how to read to learn. One of the most important final steps for comprehending a text is summarization. Once a reader is to the step of summarizing they are focusing on understanding the message of the text rather than having to decode each word. One type of summarizing is about-point, which asks two questions. The two questions are: 1) What is the text about? 2) What is the main point the writer is making about that topic? The first question is meant to identify the subject of the topic sentence. The second question is to find a term that covers all the main points the author is making, which is sometimes a difficult question to answer.

 

Materials:

• A copy the article New Monkey Discovered (URL below) for each student

•  Pencil and paper for each student

• Summarization check list (listed below)

• Comprehension quiz (listed below)

 

Procedures:

• Why is summarization important? Good readers don’t have to remember every single detail in a story; instead they can use summarization strategies to remember the most important parts of the story. In that way, they reduce a text that may have hundreds or thousands of words to a smaller part that is easy to remember.

 

• The best summarizing strategy is called about-point. About point is when you ask yourself an easy question followed by a tough question to make a topic sentence.  The easy question is "What is the text about?" The tough question is "What is the main point the writer is making about that topic?" To answer this question, you have to think of common term for all the important details in the story.

 

•  I’m going to show you how I’d do about-point with a paragraph on asthma, which is the article you are going to be reading today. Have you ever met someone who has asthma? What are their symptoms? How can we help them? What does it mean when they say a kid with asthma may “wheeze”? These are some of the questions you will be learning to answer today.

 

• Let’s talk about an important vocabulary word you will come across during your reading: process. A process is a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end. For example: The students hang up their backpack and sit at their desk to begin the morning process of the school day. Finish the sentence: My morning process to get ready for school is……

 

• Here is a paragraph from the story:

 

 

A kid with asthma can have trouble breathing because the airways are sensitive. They work normally sometimes, but other times they might swell and narrow. So breathing gets harder because the tubes close in a little bit, like a straw that's being squeezed. The swollen airways can make extra mucus, which makes things pretty sticky, so that can get in the way, too.

 

This paragraph is about why a kid with asthma has trouble breathing, but what important points are the writer making? The airways might swell and narrow sometimes. Breathing gets harder because the tubes close in a little bit, like a straw that’s being squeezed. The airways make mucus, which makes things pretty sticky. Putting these points together, I can make a topic sentence: A kid with asthma’s airways sometimes swell and make extra mucus which makes the tubes close in and makes it harder for them to breathe.

 

• Now I want you to use about-point on a paragraph:

 

A kid with asthma may wheeze (make a whistling sound), cough, and feel tightness in the chest. An asthma flare-up can get worse if a kid doesn't use asthma medicine. After an asthma flare-up, the airways almost always return to the way they were before, although it can take several days.

 

What is the paragraph about? Yes, symptoms of asthma. What are the main points the author is making about asthma symptoms? Correct, wheezing is when you cough and feel tightness in the chest. Yes, another point is an asthma flare-up can get worse if the kid is not given asthma medicine. How could we combine those ideas in one sentence beginning: Asthma symptoms…? Asthma symptoms include wheezing, coughing with tightening of chest, and asthma flare-up which can get worse if it is not treated with medicine.

 

• Now I’d like you to finish reading the article and use about-point to make a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are finished, you will have made a good summary of the article, which will help you remember important facts about asthma. Don’t summarize examples; they are written only to help you understand the main ideas. You are writing a short version of the article in your own words. And to make sure you remember, we will have a quiz after everyone finishes writing.

 

Assessment:

Collect each student’s summary of the article, and evaluate the summarization using the following checklist:

 

__ Collected important information

__ Ignored trivia and examples in summary.

__ Significantly reduced the text from the original

__ Sentences brought ideas together from each paragraph

__ Sentences organized coherently into essay form.

 

Quiz:

• What is asthma?

• Where does the air you breathe in travel before oxygen is taken out and put into your blood?

• Swollen airways make extra _____ which makes them sticky and gets in the way of air?

• Every part of your body needs ______ to keep working like it should.

• What is the symptom a kids with asthma might have that happens when you cough and your chest tightens?

• What will happen to an asthma flare-up if it is not treated with asthma medicine?

• What happens after an asthma flare up?

 

 

References:

• Asthma Article:

http://kidshealth.org/kid/asthma_basics/what/asthma.html#cat20423

 

• Bruce Murray Using About-Point to Awaken the Main Idea

http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/AboutPointRL.html