6.3 Summarising Informational Text
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Writing a three to four sentence summary of an informational text
Writing a three to four sentence summary of an informational text
Have you ever read a long article or story and thought, "This is so much information, but what is the most important part?" Imagine being able to instantly pick out the most important details, without getting lost in all the extra facts that do not really matter. What if you could quickly figure out the main idea and remember just what is necessary? Wouldn't that make reading so much easier?
One way to do this is by summarising. It is like zooming in on the core of the story and cutting away everything else that is not needed.
Let us explore how we can use summarising to take big, complex information and turn it into something easy to understand and remember!
Summarising is retelling what happened by focusing on the main details.
It is a shortened retelling of a text, including only the most important parts in the order they occur1.
We can learn the skill of summarising a non-fiction text using the TAMKO strategy — Type of the Text and Title, Author and Action, Main Idea, Key Details, Organisation. 4,5
Fig 3.1: TAMKO- Non-fiction Summarising Strategy4
Check out the summary of the text ‘Fun Culinary Creations’ below:
Glossary
Glossary
skill: A learned ability or talent to do something well
comprehension: Understanding and making sense of something you read, or learn
complex: Something that is made up of detailed parts, making it difficult to understand
effectively: Doing something in a way that produces the desired result or outcome
efficiently: Doing something in a way that saves time and resources while achieving the intended goal
Summary:
Summary:
Summarising is the process of making information shorter while conveying the main ideas and key details.
Summarising the text helps us improve comprehension, efficiently learn something new, to identify key information, and communicate effectively.
We can learn the skill of summarising a nonfiction text using the TAMKO strategy: Type of the Text and Title, Author and Action, Main Idea, Key Details, Organisation
References
1Summarizing. Reading Rockets (n.d.) (link)
2The Importance of Summarising as an Academic Skill. The London Writing Academy (2021) (link)
3What is a Summary? Twinkl (n.d.) (link)
43 Reading Strategies to Help Students Summarize Nonfiction Text. Stellar Teacher (n.d.) (link)
5Summarising Nonfiction. Stellar Teacher (n.d.) (link)
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