3.12 Summarising

Summarise the key supporting details and ideas in the story
Chapters: leaving; good boy; moving; awakening; missing; food; not famous; something in the air; a new tv; the family; excited; what I see; still there; watching; she; door

Summarising is when you take a story or information and make it shorter while keeping the main ideas and important details. It means picking out the most important parts and explaining them clearly and succinctly.

To learn more about summaries, watch the video below:

Vid 12.1: Summarising with Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then

Summarising is a useful skill for many purposes, including studying, research, and communication.
To improve comprehension: Summarising helps us to understand and remember the main ideas of a text by distilling (breaking down) complex or lengthy information into smaller, easier parts.
Learn quickly: Summaries provide a quick and efficient way to gain an overview of a longer piece of writing without having to read the entire written work. This is helpful when we have a lot of information to read or not much time.
Share ideas clearly: Summaries make it easier to explain things to others in a way they can understand and remember.

To summarise, follow these step:

1. Identify Story Elements: Think about the characters, setting, and plot.

2. Organise Your Thoughts: Think about what happened in the story and how to explain it.

3. Use the SWBSTF Summary Strategy: Answer the following questions to help write your summary.

This summary strategy is explained below with an example:

Glossary

Concise: Brief and to the point
Comprehension: Understanding the meaning or main idea of a text
SWBSTF Strategy: A summarising method that stands for Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then, Finally.
Resolution: The final outcome or lesson in a story
Main idea: The central point or message in a story
Retaining: Keeping or holding onto something, like information or ideas
Succinct: Clearly and briefly expressed
Distilling: Reducing or breaking down something to its essential parts or main ideas.
Complex: Having many parts that make something complicated
Digestible: Easy to understand

Summary:

Summarising is the process of condensing information/story into a shorter, more concise version while retaining the main ideas and key details.
Summarising the text helps us improve comprehension, efficiently learn something new, and communicate effectively.
We can summarise text using the SWBSTF strategy: Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then, Finally.

Extension/Further Reading:

To learn more about summaries listen to the song on this link.
For further practice with summarising, click on this link.

References:

1 Notebook Know How. Amy Buckner(2005)

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