Lesson Plan
Create a Nonfiction Text Summary
Give your students a chance to hone their reading comprehension skills by creating nonfiction text summaries in this introductory lesson.
Grade:
Subjects:
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Learning Objectives
Students will be able to summarize the key elements of a nonfiction text.
Introduction
(5 minutes)- Gather students to the rug for the start of the lesson.
- Ask students if they know what fiction is and allow a few students to share out. Answers might include, "Fiction is about something pretend/imaginary/not realistic."
- Ask students what nonfiction is and allow a few students to share out. Answers might include, "Nonfiction is about something real," "It is sometimes called informational text," or "You learn something from it," etc.
- Say, “Today we are going to learn how to create a summary of a nonfiction text. A summary is a short explanation of a whole text. A summary is different than retelling a story because you are only going to focus on the big ideas and share what you find most important about what you have read."
- Ask students, “Why do you think we might use a summary?” Answers might include, "To share information with others," "To keep track of what we read," or "To help us pay attention to what we read."
Beginning: Have ELs tell a partner the definition of summary, either in English or their home language (L1).
Intermediate: If needed, provide the following sentence stem: "A summary is ________."