English: Form 1 week 9

CARAPICHAIMA EAST SECONDARY SCHOOL

LANGUAGE ARTS DEPARTMENT
SUBJECT: ENGLISH
FORM 1
WEEK 9: 7th – 11th June 2021
LESSON NOTES
LESSON 1
TOPIC: Summary Skills
What is a summary?

A summary is a short retelling of a longer written passage, containing the author’s most
important ideas. Summarizing helps improve both your reading and writing skills. To summarize,
you must read a passage closely, finding the main ideas and supporting ideas. Then you must
briefly write down those ideas in a few sentences or a paragraph.

When writing a summary:

Do Not: Do:

- include examples - identify main ideas

- include statistics (numbers, percentages) - use your own words
- repeat information - ensure that the information in the
original piece is the same as in your
summary.

How to Summarize a Paragraph

1. Preview and read. Preview and read the paragraph closely. You will probably find
that you need to read the paragraph more than one time to ensure that you understand
what the paragraph is all about.

2. Make a list or outline. Determine the main idea and the supporting details of the
paragraph. Make a list or outline of these ideas. Be sure to use your own words when
doing this step.
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3. Write a summary. Using your list, write a summary of the paragraph. State the main
ideas followed by important ideas while leaving out examples and unnecessary
descriptions. Limit your summary to just one or two sentences.

4. Read aloud and correct. Read the summary aloud, correcting any mistakes.

Example of a summary:

Original Text

“The Northern Lights”

There are times when the night sky glows with bands of color. The bands may begin as cloud
shapes and then spread into a great arc across the entire sky. They may fall in folds like a
curtain drawn across the heavens. The lights usually grow brighter, then suddenly dim. During
this time, the sky glows with pale yellow, pink, green, violet, blue, and red. These lights are
called the Aurora Borealis. Some people call them the Northern Lights. Scientists have been
watching them for hundreds of years. They are not quite sure what causes them. In ancient times
people were afraid of the Lights. They imagined that they saw fiery dragons in the sky. Some
even concluded that the heavens were on fire.

Summary
The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, are bands of color in the night sky. Ancient people
thought that these lights were dragons on fire, and even modern scientists are not sure what they
are.
(In this example we see that an entire paragraph can be summarized into two lines and still keep
its’ original meaning. All the examples of the different range of colours and extra descriptions are
not included. The summary is also written in the writer’s own words.

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Activity: Now you can try summarizing a passage on your own.

Name: ____________________
Kimora Ramkissoon Class: _________
1.1 Teacher: ______________________
Aneesa Ramcharan

Read the following passage about penguins and summarize the text in 6 sentences using
your own words.

Penguins are birds that live in the coldest parts of the world. They are black with white
stomachs and have small wings. They move across the ice by waddling slowly on their little
feet with their wings out to the side. Penguins cannot fly even though they have wings. They
use their wings to balance them as they waddle across the ice. Their bodies are also very good
at keeping the penguin warm in the cold weather. Penguins are very good at swimming and use
their bodies to move easily through the water. Penguins need to be good swimmers because
they eat mostly fish and sea animals. When they catch their food, they swallow it whole! They
also need to use their strong bodies to get away from seals and sharks because seals and sharks
eat penguins. There are lots of different types of penguins and they come in all different sizes
and shapes. We all need to make sure we take good care of our world because oil spills and
global warming can destroy the penguins’ home.

1. Penguins
________________________________________________________________________
are birds that live in the coldest part of the world.

2. They
________________________________________________________________________
are Black and white and have little feet .

3. They
________________________________________________________________________
are good swimmers because they need to swim to get their food .

4. They
________________________________________________________________________
use their bodies' strength to get away from sharks and seals .

5. ________________________________________________________________________
Oil spills and global warming can destroy their home so we need to take better care of the earth .

6. They
________________________________________________________________________
get around on the ice by waddling on their stomach .

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