Main+Idea+Summarizing

Main Idea/Summarizing Area Please post your strategies you presented here - thanks!

**Literature Source:** //Genetics in the Garden // from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.
 * Pyramid Diagram**
 * Name:** Josh Pyne
 * Strategy:** Pyramid Diagram
 * Comprehension Area:** Main ideas/Summarizing
 * Objective:** Students will read the article and summarize the main ideas associated with the reading regarding Gregor Mendel’s contribution to the foundation of genetics.
 * Overview:** Students will read the article //Genetics in the Garden//. They will then have to fill out the pyramid diagram relating to the question, “What did Gregor Mendel discover about trait inheritance and how?”
 * Sample Pyramid Diagram:** [[file:Pyramid Diagram for Gregor Mendel.doc]]

Name: Mike Riska Strategy: Main Idea Formula Comprehension Area: Main ideas/Summarizing Literature Source: __The Geographical Magazine__ v67 pg 58-59 Objective: Students will learn how to summarize a scientific article and construct a main idea. Overview: Students will read the article prior to working on the attached worksheet. The students will then fill in spaces for the topic, what is said about the topic, and the purpose of the article. The students will then combine these elements using the main idea formula to come up with a main idea for the article. Here is the worksheet: main idea formula worksheet
 * Main Idea Formula**

Name: Christian Vanseth Strategy: Main Idea Memory Storage Comprehension Area: Organizing/Sculpting/Summarizing Strategies Literature Source: Beyond Manana: Other Aspects of the Concept of Time in Hispanic Societies as Seen in Celebrations and Activities throughout the Year. Objective: While reading, students will briefly see many of the different celebrations in Latin American culture before they are explained in detail. Overview: Students will find the main idea of the article. They will also be able to form and summarize sub-topics (eg. different celebrations) from the article, based on the main idea. From these sub-topics we will discuss which are the most important for further discussion. The most important topics will be used for following lessons.
 * Main Idea Memory Storage**

Name: Dan Curran Strategy: Outline-ish Thoughts Comprehension Area: Organizing/Sculpting/Summarizing Strategies Literature Source: //Biology: Exploring Life//, by Neil A. Campbell, Chapter 14.3 and 14.4, pg. 305-316
 * Outline-ish Thoughts**

Objective: Students will gain practice constructing an outline as an attempt to organize information gathered on the theory of natural selection.
Overview: As homework prior to this activity, students will be required to read a textbook chapter on natural selection as the mechanism for evolution. This is a difficult subject to understand, so as a way to organize this information and summarize the key points the class will work together in constructing an outline based on the material. As the teacher, I will provide the subject headings and subheadings in the form of a partially filled outline, which they will complete in small groups by filling-in the remaining details.

Name:** Casey Robers
 * Sorry, I Lost my Headings
 * Strategy:** Sorry, I Lost My Headings
 * Comprehension Area:** Summarizing main ideas
 * Literature Source:** Four articles from Science Centric: //Electron Filmed for First time ever, Scientist develop the world’s thinnest balloon, Carbon molecule with a charge would be tomorrow’s semiconductor, and Atomic tug of war.//
 * Objective:** Students will be able to summarize works of literature effectively.
 * Overview:** Students will be given four news articles that deal with atoms. In each of the articles the heading or title will be blocked out. Students will read the articles and come up with their own heading that will capture the main point of the article.


 * Ten Important Words**
 * Name:** Oriel Boomgarden
 * Strategy:** 10 Important Words
 * Comprehension Area:** Summarizing
 * Literature Source:** //Pride and Patriotism// by James Nuechterlein from the Journal //First Things// May 2001
 * Objective:** Students will read the article and find 10 important words that will aid in their understanding of the text.
 * Overview:** As they are reading this passage, students will pick out 10 words in the article they think are important. They will write each word in the table and then explain why they thought it was important to the overall understanding of the article. Here is my worksheet.


 * Name:** Jackie Huebner
 * Strategy:** Webpage Creation
 * Comprehension Area:** Organizing/Sculpting/Summarizing Strategies
 * Literature Source:** La Quinceañera: A Hispanic Celebration of Budding Womanhood, from http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/dpalfrey/dpquince.html
 * Objective**: Students will outline the main categories of the article and create a website using these categories as buttons that when clicked upon, will provide the reader with a summary of each of the main points.
 * Overview:** Students will observe the teacher model how to create a website by summarizing an article and creating headings for each of the main topics. Then they will read a new article, outline the main points to use as buttons, create a summary of the article, and then create the webpage to be published on the school website.

**Venn Diagram**  **Name**: Chelsie Netzer **Strategy**: Venn diagram **Comprehension Area**: Connecting to Background Knowledge **Literature Source:** __Ocean:__ __The World’s Last Wilderness Revealed__
 * Objective:** Students will use prior knowledge about living organisms to explain how we categorize life, by comparing and contrasting characteristics living organisms share.
 * Overview**: Students will start simple by discussing unique and similar characteristics of plants and animals. By reading the book thier Venn diagrams will grow as the complexity of organisms they are confronted with also grows.

Name:** Elizabeth Kutzke    
 * Journals
 * Strategy:** Reading Logs
 * Comprehension Area:** Main Idea Summarizing
 * Literature Source:** //Heads in the Sand// by George Gann
 * Objective:** Students will reflect upon 2-3 of the main points in the article, giving their own personal thoughts or opinions in the form of a journal entry.
 * Overview:** Students will write a journal entry recalling 2-3 of the main arguments stated by George Gann in the article. They will give their own personal response to each of the main points and can choose to agree or disagree with the author and provide support for their opinions.


 * Name:** Seth Breunig
 * Strategy:** Magnet Summary
 * Comprehension Area:** Organizing/Sculpting/Summarizing Strategies
 * Literature Source:** “Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address: 27 February 1860”, found in Abraham Lincoln and Slavery by Kirk Ankeney and David Vigilante, pp. 40-41.
 * Objective**: The students will use the “magnet summary” strategy to summarize, and more importantly understand, Lincoln’s rather nuanced position on the issue of slavery in early 1860.
 * Overview:** Following an introduction to the “magnet summary” strategy, the students will break Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address down by paragraph. Following their listing of the key magnet words and other significant details, they will be asked to construct sentences out of these words which capture Lincoln’s sentiments. One would hope that in reading these summaries a sense of Lincoln’s moral opposition to slavery and its expansion would emerge from the first paragraph. His pragmatic belief that it need not be immediately abolished where it already existed is the dominant theme of the second paragraph, and should stand out in the summaries. Thus, this strategy may allow students to make sense of an otherwise very confusing stance.


 * Name: ** Jake Larsh
 * Strategy: ** Language Approach Plus
 * Comprehension Area ** : Organizing/Sculpting/Summarizing Strategies
 * Literature Source: ** // Mein Kampf //, Adolf Hitler p. 293-296
 * Objective ** : The students will read the excerpt and develop a paragraph sentence by sentence to summarize the main ideas.
 * Overview ** : Students will write sentences in groups or as a whole class, guided by their teacher, to make a cohesive paragraph. All the while they will focus on their use of words, modifying and changing sentences and words the build their academic funds of knowledge.

**Name:** James Johnson **Strategy:** Three-Column Notes **Comprehension Area:** Organizing/Summarizing **Literature Source:** //Stellar Origins: From the Cold Depths of Space// by Debra Shepherd, //Sky & Telescope//, //113//(6), 26-30. **Objective:** Students will organize their thoughts on what the article says about stellar birth. They will predict the main idea and summarize the article as they read in order to refine that main idea. **Overview:** Using three columns on the board, labeled “Main Idea”, “Summaries”, and “Details” from left to right, the class will organize its thoughts about an article. Before reading they will think of a possible main idea based on the title. As they read notes will be taken in the “Details” column, and short summaries will be written based on these notes. The class will then use the summaries to help rewrite and redefine the main idea as they read.

Name: Nick Katsandonis Strategy: Key word construction Comprehension Area: Organizing/sculpting/summarizing strategies Literature source: Natural Selection http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/biology/evolution/genetics/naturalselection.html Objective: The objective is for students to read the article and become introduced to the topic by receiving and overview to generate ideas on the concept. Overview: Students will read a brief article that summarizes the concept and will use chosen keywords preferably from the text to capture the over all concept of the text and will use evidence from the text to support their choice. Then build off the key words to summarize the text.


 * Name:** Ally Peerenboom
 * Strategy:** Jigsaw Summary
 * Comprehension Area:** Main Idea/Summarizing
 * Literature Source:** //Pinatas and Paper Flowers// by Lila Perl
 * Objective:** Students will be able to effectively summarize what they have read, and explain their summaries to their peers.
 * Overview:** Students will be put into "home groups" and each group will be assigned a section of the booik to read and on which they will become "experts." The students will then read their sections silently, and then discuss with their groups about what they think the main points are. The students can take notes or be provided with a guide to help them pull out important facts. Each student in each group is then given a number, and then they get together with other students that have their same number. In this way there should be one "expert" student from each "home group" in each of the new groups. Then, each "expert" student will teach the other members of his or her group about his or her part of the book, demonstrating his or her summarizing skills.


 * Name:** Brooke Friederichs
 * Strategy:** Summarizing Training Camp
 * Comprehension Area:** Main Idea/Summarizing
 * Literature Source:** //Stem Cells Grow Up// by Kevin Kelleher, Popular Science Magazine
 * Objective:** Students will be able to identify main ideas and supporting ideas from an isolated paragraph from an article using context clues alone.
 * Overview:** A paragraph from the article Stem Cells Grow Up, plus the title, will be placed on an overhead and read aloud. They will be reminded that the author included this paragraph for a reason, and that it's important to identify that reason. Students will read the paragraph, and then break off into discussion to determine what the main points and supporting details are. They will then as a class underline details/phrases that are important to the main topic in one color, and supporting details in another color. They will finally come up with a main idea for the paragraph, which will be written on top.


 * Name:** Kyle Mannel
 * Strategy:** Think-Aloud Summaries
 * Comprehension Area:** Main Idea/Summarizing
 * Literature Source:** Colony Collapse Disorder: Many Suspects, No Smoking Gun by Myrna E. Watanabe
 * Objective:** Students will actively engage in material presented in class first going through portions of the text together, and then in small groups to collaboratively witness a comprehension habit.
 * Overview:** Students will break up into small groups and will learn how to pre-read using strategies I bring up in class (title, visuals, etc.) from this they will make a prediction in the groups for the main idea and purpose for the reading. Each group will share their idea and they will be written up on the board to witness. Each member in the group will then read the material out loud and stop at the marked portions I have stated o bring about a group summary of the topic at hand. The first time will be discussed in class and the next sections will be completed on their own among the groups. Each time we will come together and discuss the ideas to collaborate and witness the important ideas of the text at hand. The groups will then give a summary of the main ideas, and describe if it is consistent with the idea proposed in the pre-read strategies.


 * Name:** Joshua Korotka
 * Strategy:** Main Idea Cafe
 * Comprehension Area:** Vocabulary/Understanding and Remembering Word Strategies
 * Literature Source:** The Stock Market " How It Works" http://library.thinkquest.org/3088/pp.1-2
 * Objective:** Students will learn new vocabulary and how they relate to each other. They will also learn the basic procedures of buying stocks.
 * Overview:** I wil give the students each a different pieces of paper containing different key words that they need to know when buying stock. They will make a guess as a group on the order and how the words or events are related. After they make a guess they can read the article and put their ideas to see how accurate their guesses were.[[file:Stock Market full.doc]]


 * Name:** Jacob Chadderdon
 * Strategy:** Outline-ish Thoughts
 * Comprehension Area:** Main Idea/Summarizing
 * Literature Source:** Newsweek from Oct 20, 2008 "If You Build It, Will They Pay?"
 * Objective:** Students will learn about the economy as it relates to professional sports, topics covered will be the stock market drop of late and it's potential effects on the game goers. Also students will learn how to identify key information within an article and organize it into various categories as an outline.
 * Overview:** Students will read the article "If You Build It, Will They Pay?" and then in small groups of 4-5they will identify the key points of the article and rank them in order of most important to least important. Each group must have at least 5 points to discuss with the class as a whole. Then the class will gather together and make a class list of the important points of the article and based on the frequency of ideas presented or in the case of a tie a class vote the ideas generated will be listed from most important to least important as the class sees it.


 * Name: ** Alisha Brandtmeier
 * Strategy: ** Jigsaw Summaries
 * Comprehension Area: ** Main Idea/Summarizing
 * Literature Source: “ **Scaling the Pyramids” Nova
 * When Utilized: ** After reading

The class will bedivided up into small groups. Each group will be assigned a section of the article “Scaling the Pyramids” and become an expert on that section. This is an activity on summarizing the main ideas, so students should pick out the important facts that they think the rest of the class should know. After becoming an expert and discussing in small groups the class will come back together and discuss as a whole. Each small group will talk about the main ideas of their section of the article.  It’s important for students to be able to determine what’s important when they are reading. By working in small groups students are able to discuss what they feel would be beneficial to share with the rest of the class. When they only have to focus on a small section it’s a lot easier to understand that information and become an expert and then they can teach that section of the article to the other students. They will still have an understanding of what the article is about because each group will be sharing their main ideas. After students work in small groups and with just a small section of the article they will be able to read larger articles in the future and be able to pick out just the main ideas in order to summarize.

Name: Brittany Rumphol
 * Strategy:** Relay Summary
 * Comprehension Area:** Main Idea/Summarizing
 * Literature Source:** //Monkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial//, Ronald Kidd
 * Objective:** Students will be able to learn about the most important trial that led up to the teachings of evolution in the classroom. With the use of team work, students can identify and summarize the main points in the short novel.
 * Overview:** Students will be asked to read the book //Monkey Town// written by Ronald Kidd. Students will then be split up in teams of five and be assigned a chapter. When all groups are set, beginning with chapter one, each group of five will come up and each write one sentence that leads to the next to summarize the chapter. At the end there will be a complete novel summary just a few sentences and it will allow the students to reflect back on what they read and extract the important points.

** Name: ** Jim Krause ** Strategy: ** Matrices ** Comprehension Area: **A nalyzing/Summarizing Ideas ** Literature Source: **// Hoja de Ruta // by Gac-Artigas, pp. 19-34 ** Utilized: ** During & After the Reading Before the reading //Hoja de Ruta// by Gac-Artigas, pp. 19-34, students will be asked what they know of ancient the ancient cultures of Latin and South America. Students will then be given a reading matrix with the three largest civilizations of ancient South America: the Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas in the left hand column. In the top row will be five main parts of each of these cultures their politics, economy, form of writing, arts and architecture, and finally the descendents of these great civilizations. Students will be given this assignment as homework for the next day’s class. During and/or after the reading, students will fill in the matrices with the information about each civilization. In class the day after, students will participate by sharing their answers with the class. Then students will be asked why they think it is important of knowing about the Incas, Aztecs, and Mayans, and how it pertains to the theme in class: The Spanish Conquest of Latin and South America. The importance of this reading and matrix is that students are able to understand what pre-European colonization of Latin and South America was like. The Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs had a culture of their own that had religion, an economical system, arts, forms of writing, and had descendents. The reading and matrix help to show that. The matrix will also help students correlate, for example, a religion with a certain culture. The matrix gives better structure to the understanding of the ancient cultures to the students. This is also meant to inspire to the students to ask why the Spanish conquistadors did what they did when overthrowing these Latin and South American civilizations.


 * Name**:TJ Tersine
 * Article:** "Milestone in DNA History." __Acess Excellence @the national health muesum__. Sep. 2003. Nation Health Muesum. 9 Nov. 2008 <http://www.accessexcellence.org/RC/AB/WYW/wkbooks/SFTS/sidebarmilestone.php>.
 * Comprehension strategy:** Jig saw summary
 * Objective:** Student will comprise a comprehensive study of the history of DNA and how it was discovered to be the hereditary material.
 * Overview:** Students will be given the article divided into sections each group will summarize the main points of that article then as a class we will all come together and put the discoveries into correct chronological order. Students will be forced to think about how DNA was discovered and what important experiments were needed to reach these conclusions. Students should be able to draw a cause and effect from each one of the experiments done. Students will write this information down into their notebooks and will be tested on the material later.

Arthur Long