Let's Have a Summary Ball!

 

With summer just around the corner, what a perfect time to read a story about the sun, sand, and beach! Kay S. Heath is a retired teacher and local author that has written several delightful children’s books. Her book, Three Little Frogs Go to the Beach,  is a charming story of Momma frog and her three baby frogs. Momma wants to take the young frogs on an adventure for the day to explore the beach. At the beach, the frogs see many things they have never seen before, including humans. They observe the people playing on the beach and in the ocean, and building sand castles and frog huts. Momma frog explains all the things that the people are doing like wearing sunglasses and hats, putting on sunscreen, and sitting under large umbrellas to protect them from the sun. When the day was done, the young frogs were excited about what they had learned on their journey, but mostly, they were very pleased to simply be frogs.

This is a wonderful story to correlate with teaching students how to summarize. An activity that can be done with this book, and any other book read to children, is called a Summary Ball. The teacher would first take a beach ball and write the words Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why on each of the panels of the beach ball. After reading a story, the students will toss the ball around; each student that catches the ball must read the question word that is closest to their right thumb. If the question is:

Who? - the students must describe the characters that were in the story.

What? - students must summarize what all major events happened in the story.

When? - the students must tell the class when this story took place.

Where? - students must describe where the story took place (setting).

How? - students must summarize how the characters reacted in the story or how the characters came to a conclusion at the end of the story.

Why? - the students must tell why the characters acted as they did or did what they did within the story.
 

 

As the students are describing and summarizing what all happens in the book, the teacher writes down the answers to all of the Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why questions on the board for all of the students to view. Afterwards, students will do the same thing at their desk while making a chart with all the questions on it and filling it in independently. This is a great activity to use for summarizing because it gives every student a chance to tell what they learned. It is also a great tool because there are more students than questions, so students get to add more than one detail per question.
After this activity has been practiced in the classroom a few times, the students will hopefully remember the Summary Ball activity and the questions on the ball to help them with future summarizing.

What Did Your Mind's Eye See?

 

 

Have you ever wanted something and wished you could just draw it so you would have it right in front of you? We all wish we could do that at times, but Harold in Harold and the Purple Crayon gets overwhelmed with all of the endless things he created with his purple crayon! One day, Harold intended to go on a walk, but this wasn't any ordinary walk. First, Harold needed a moon so he could see. After drawing his moon, he needed a path so he would know where he was going for his walk. This walk led him to drawing apple trees, buildings, cities, police officers, mountains, and much more! Harold's purple crayon leads him to draw so many outlandish things that he forgot where his bedroom window was. In the end, Harold draws his own window, crawls in, draws a bed and some covers, and falls fast asleep with the crayon lying on the floor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is much visualizing and imagination when reading Harold and the Purple Crayon  by Crockett Johnson. This book would be an excellent story to use to teach students how to visualize what is going on in the text.

 

 

 

 

 

This visualizing, activity worksheet would be fun to do while reading Harold and the Purple Crayon. It was found on teacherspayteachers.com, and it can be used with any story to teach visualizing. The teacher can have the students write on the worksheet during or after the story that is read aloud or independently. For example, during a read aloud story, the teacher would simply pause at various points in the story and ask the students to write in the specified section. If the activity was done after reading the story, students could recall what their thoughts were, or what their mind's eye saw, when the teacher was reading.

 

We like this activity because, even though so many things are going on throughout the story, students can still visualize numerous things that happen, and write or illustrate them in the blocks on this worksheet. The students are guided to recreate the images in their minds at the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and they also describe how the images helped them better understand the text.



Having Reflections & Making Connections

Trying something new can be a little scary, but it just might surprise you! The Berenstain Bears Go To Camp by Stan and Jan Berenstain is another entertaining, delightful book by these two renowned authors. Like their other Berenstain Bear books, this one is about the Bear family activities and experiences. School had just ended for the summer, and Bear Brother and Bear Sister had nothing to do. After Mama Bear read about a summer camp and shared the information with the cubs, they were unenthusiastic about signing up. Brother Bear was not sure what it was like to go to camp, and Sister Bear did not like the thought of an overnight sleep out. After pondering awhile about camp, and still having nothing much to do, the two cubs decided to give camp a try. They experienced many of the classic camping adventures such as canoeing, swimming, arts and crafts, and so many other activities that they forgot all about their initial fears and participating in the sleep out. The cubs had such an amazing time at camp, and they even won some medals on the last day of Field Day games.

This is a wonderful book that students can relate to their own personal experiences. The cubs are bored at home with nothing to do over the summer, they have fears of participating in some activities and about sleeping overnight, and they have new and exciting experiences. There are connections to be made on almost every page!

A wonderful activity to have students participate in would be this Making Connections worksheet I downloaded for free at teacherspayteachers.com. Students will write a sentence directly from the book in the first section, and then write how it relates to them , what it reminds them of, or someone they heard about having a similar experience. Then, the student would circle what type of connection it was.

This activity would be a great way to allow students to show what they got from the text. It would also give the teacher an idea of what each student perceived from the text. This is a valuable tool in the classroom because the teacher gains insight on how his or her students acknowledge what happens when they read a story and how well they can make a connection to what is happening when they read.