The Summarizer Role

In class on Monday and Tuesday we are continuing our review of implied main idea with a quick warm-up activity. Then we are reading Maniac Magee through chapter 28. Instead of a role sheet students will meet in literature circles for discussion of the story and the completion of a summary using one of our summarization strategies:

• "Somebody Wanted But So"
• "Fortunately, Unfortunately"

For a look at the notes on the summarizer lesson click here.

Literature Circles

We've begun our in-class novel, Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli. We have a class set of these books and we will be reading and discussing this in groups in class. We urge students to NOT read ahead, no matter how tempting!
To facilitate in-depth conversations we are practicing the various roles of the literature circle. Each role has a "role sheet" to complete before joining the discussion.
We have read "Before the Story" and Chapter 1, and we are practicing the Connector Role. Completion of the role sheet will encourage students to read actively and have meaningful conversations.

Literature Circles

We will begin a novel unit shortly, but first we are learning our roles for literature circles. What are literature circles?

}Groups that meet regularly to discuss assigned readings.
}Open, natural conversations happen.
}Roles are assigned to each student.
}Each student must bring required materials to the discussion (or they do not participate…).

Some students may have participated in circles like these before, but we are requiring students to be prepared very specifically for the in-depth, meaningful conversations we want them to have. There are 5 roles that will be assigned, plus two roles that everybody will take on:

We have begun learning the roles of summarizer and word wizard. To summarize we are using the summarization strategies "Somebody Wanted But So," and "Fortunately, Unfortunately." We practiced these strategies using Pixar short films and some of the short stories we have read this year.

Knick Knack (Pixar Short)

Somebody (Character)
◦The snowman in the globe.
Wanted (Main Goal)
◦To party with the bikini knick-knack girl
But (Conflict)
◦All of his attempts to exit the snow globe failed
So (Result/Solution)
◦He remained stuck in the snow globe which had fallen into a fish tank during his rush to escape.

Fortunately
◦The snowman in the snow globe had a lot of tools to try to break out and join the bikini girl at the party.
Unfortunately
◦All his attempts failed, and he was trapped in his snow globe, which had fallen into a fish tank, and was still unable to get to the ladies.

This skill will be practiced on the role sheets as we begin the novel in the coming days.