Reading to Learn

Summarization with Elephant Seals

Rationale

Procedures

Reading comprehension means understanding what is happening in a text. Summarization is an effective way to help understand what is being read. Understanding reading involves the recall and pulling of the most important details and main ideas of the story. Summarizing makes the reader outline the story with important points. An effective strategy in summarization is called about-point. This asks two critical questions regarding the text: a) What is the text about and (b) What is the main point the author is making about that topic? The first question is usually an easy question, and it identifies the topic that becomes the subject of the topic sentence. The second is a harder question. Since the author usually makes several points, the reader must “superordinate” the points. This means finding an umbrella term that encompasses the main points being made by the author. The main point becomes the predicate of the topic sentence.

Say: Now that we are all expert readers, we are going to learn about summarizing a story. Summarizing is taking the most important parts of the story and retelling them. It is the same thing as telling your best friend about your favorite story, but leaving out small details. When you summarize, you find the main idea of the story. Good readers do not have to remember everything in the story. They can retell the story in a short amount of time rather than in thousands of words.

A good way to help yourself summarize is in about-point. You ask yourself an easy question and then you ask a hard question. The first, more simple question is “What is the story about?” The second question is harder. “What is the main point the author is trying to make?” To answer this question, you must come up with a word, an umbrella term. This is one word that encompasses all of the main points that the author is trying to tell you.

To practice about-point, we are going to read about elephant seals. Have you ever seen an elephant seal? Why are they called elephant seals? How do the female seals look different from male elephant seals? How many types of elephant seals are there? These are all questions that will be answered while you read your article today.

Let’s go over a word that might help you understand the text better. This word is extraordinary. This word means very unusual or remarkable. We can use this word many times. Here’s an example. “He told an extraordinary story about his trip in the mountains.” His story wasn’t boring. It was quite amazing. What are some extraordinary things that you have seen? Finish this sentence. “This most extraordinary thing that I have ever seen is…”

Here is a paragraph from the story:

These seals are extraordinary swimmers and divers. They spend up to ten months a year living in the ocean without ever touching land. They can dive down to 5,000 feet and stay underwater for up to two hours, and when they come up for air, they only remain near the surface for three or four minutes before they dive again. The females feed primarily on squid and octopuses in the deepest parts of the ocean. Males hunt along the shallow Continental Shelf and look for small sharks, stingrays, and other bottom-feeding fish.

This paragraph is about what elephant seals do when they dive and swim, but what are the important points that the author is making? Seals rarely spend time on land. They dive very deep, and can stay underwater for many minutes. Female and male elephant seals have different spending habits. How could we combine those points starting with the words “elephant seals?” Elephant seals spend most of their time in water as they hunt for food in different parts of the ocean depths.

Now I want you to use about-point on a paragraph.

The male elephant seal (called a bull) can be 14 to 16 feet long, and weigh between 3,000 and 5,000 pounds. That's longer and heavier than an average sized automobile! The female (called a cow) is slightly shorter and lighter. She can be 9 to 12 feet long and weigh between 900 and 1,800 pounds.

What is this paragraph about? Correct! Elephant seals. What is the main point that the author is trying to make about elephant seals? (Wait for answers) Male elephant seals weigh 3000 to 5000 pounds and are very long in size. What is another point? Female sea lions are 900 to 1800 pounds and are a little bit shorter than male sea lions. How can we combine this into one sentence? Elephants seals differ in size by gender as the males are bigger than the females.

It is now your turn to read the article. I want you to use the about-point strategy for each paragraph to make a topic sentence for each paragraph. When you are done, you will have a good summary of the article. This will help you remember important points about the elephant seals. Make sure to include the most important points. Do not put tiny, trivial details into your topic sentences. You are rewriting the article in a short version in your own words. When you are done writing, you will take a quiz to see if you retained any of the information from the article.