Paraphrasing and Summarizing

Paraphrasing and Summarizing

Ms. McGhee’s Third Grade

What is Paraphrasing?

• Paraphrasing is restating text giving the meaning in another form.

• You paraphrase when you use text written by another person. – Rewrite the text in your own words.

• Paraphrasing shows that you’ve read and understand the original text rather than repeating it word for word.

An example of Paraphrasing

Original Paragraph: Usually, female kangaroos give birth to one joey at a time. Newborns weigh as little as 0.03 ounces at birth. After birth, the joey crawls into its mother’s pouch, where it will nurse and continue to grow and develop. Red kangaroo joeys do not leave the pouch for good until they are more than eight months old.

Retrieved from http://www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/kangaroo.html.

Paraphrase: After a female kangaroo gives birth to a joey, the newborn crawls into its mother’s pouch where it feeds and grows until it’s eight months old.

What is Summarizing?

• What is worth remembering? • When you summarize, you reduce the amount of text.

- When you reduce text, you take away words. • Only use the most important ideas from the

text. – Focus on the key points

• It’s okay to ignore information that isn’t important.

•

Tiger sharks are named for the dark, vertical stripes found mainly on juveniles. As these sharks mature, the lines begin to fade and almost disappear. These large, blunt-nosed predators have a duly earned reputation as man-eaters. They are second only to great whites in attacking people. But because they have a near completely undiscerning palate, they are not likely to swim away after biting a human, as great whites frequently do.

They are consummate scavengers, with excellent senses of sight and smell and a nearly limitless menu of diet items. They have sharp, highly serrated teeth and powerful jaws that allow them to crack the shells of sea turtles and clams. The stomach contents of captured tiger sharks have included stingrays, sea snakes, seals, birds, squids, and even license plates and old tires.

Retrieved from http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/fish/tiger-shark/.

An example of Summarizing: Original Text

An example of Summarizing: Summary of text

Tiger sharks will eat just about anything. They use their sense of sight and smell to hunt. Their pointed, serrated teeth and strong jaws are helpful when breaking shells and even human bones. Unlike the great white shark, the tiger shark is more aggressive after taking a bite. The tiger shark probably won’t swim away contently, but will continue to attack.

Helpful Hints

• Read the entire text first.

• What is the main idea?

• What are the important details that support the main idea (evidence)?

• Summarize the text verbally first.

• Take notes, but don’t write down the text word for word.

• Use your own words. You are the author.

• Use a thesaurus.

Your Turn!Paraphrase Service Dogs assist people with disabilities other than vision or hearing impairment. With special training these dogs work with people who use power or manual wheelchairs, have balance issues, have various types of autism, need seizure alert or response, need to be alerted to other medical issues like low blood sugar, or have psychiatric disabilities.

Retrieved from http://www.assistancedogsinternational.org

Summarize Service Dogs assist people with disabilities other than vision or hearing impairment. With special training these dogs work with people who use wheelchairs, have various types of autism, need seizure alert or response, or need to be alerted to other medical issues like low blood sugar. These specially trained dogs can help by retrieving objects that are out of their person’s reach, opening and closing doors, turning light switches off and on, barking to indicate that help is needed, finding another person and leading the person to the handler, and many other individual tasks as needed by a person with a disability.