2. Summarizing and Reporting
Summarising Text is an important skill for
pulling out important facts, (who, what, when
where and why?)or whatever key information
you are trying to attain from a piece of writing
so that you can retell it in your own words.
Today we are going to look at three methods
to summarize text and present it using
technology.
Highlighting Text
Creating a Table
Creating a Diagram or Flow Chart
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3. Sinking of The Titanic (Your Text)
The text you will use is from Eyewitness
History It retells The Sinking of the Titanic.
The Text is located on the next slide for
those who do not have Internet Access
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4. On April 10, 1912, the Titanic, largest ship afloat, left Southampton, England on her maiden
voyage to New York City. The White Star Line had spared no expense in assuring her luxury. A
legend even before she sailed, her passengers were a mixture of the world's wealthiest
basking in the elegance of first class accommodations and immigrants packed into
steerage.
She was touted as the safest ship ever built, so safe that she carried only 20 lifeboats - enough
to provide accommodation for only half her 2,200 passengers and crew. This discrepancy
rested on the belief that since the ship's construction made her "unsinkable," her lifeboats
were necessary only to rescue survivors of other sinking ships. Additionally, lifeboats took up
valuable deck space. Four days into her journey, at 11:40 P.M. on the night of April 14, she
struck an iceberg. Her fireman compared the sound of the impact to "the tearing of calico,
nothing more." However, the collision was fatal and the icy water soon poured through the
ship.
It became obvious that many would not find safety in a lifeboat. Each passenger was issued
a life jacket but life expectancy would be short when exposed to water four degrees below
freezing. As the forward portion of the ship sank deeper, passengers scrambled to the stern.
John Thayer witnessed the sinking from a lifeboat. "We could see groups of the almost fifteen
hundred people still aboard, clinging in clusters or bunches, like swarming bees; only to fall in
masses, pairs or singly, as the great after part of the ship, two hundred and fifty feet of it, rose
into the sky, till it reached a sixty-five or seventy degree angle." The great ship slowly slid
beneath the waters two hours and forty minutes after the collision
The next morning, the liner Carpathia rescued 705 survivors. One thousand five hundred
twenty-two passengers and crew were lost. Subsequent inquiries attributed the high loss of life
to an insufficient number of lifeboats and inadequate training in their use.
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5. Highlighting Text
You will need to copy the previous text from This
PowerPoint (CTRL + C) into Word and then you are
going to highlight the text using these Icons.
You can select a range of colours to highlight
different types of text. www.edgalaxy.com
6. Highlighting Text
PleaseHighlight all of the Text in Word
using a different colour for each of the
five W’s
Who,? What? When? Where? Why?
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7. Creating a Table
Now that you have summarized your text into the 5
W’s based around the sinking of the Titanic. You will
create a table of all your information. It should look
something Like this. Your Table may be more
detailed than mine
WHO?
WHAT?
WHEN?
WHERE? Southampton England Atlantic Ocean
WHY?
Here is a simple explanation about creating tables in
MS Word if you are unsure of how to do www.edgalaxy.com
this.
8. Creating a Flowchart
Now that we have collected all of our data and
organised it into a table next we are going to create a
flowchart of the events that happened that led to the
sinking of the Titanic.
You can do this in Word 2007 or PowerPoint 2007 using
the SmartArt tool and selecting the Process option.
Here is a link to video explaining how to do this.
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9. Writing Your Report
Now that you have collected all of your information
from the Titanic text, created your table and a
flowchart your final task is to retell the sinking of the
Titanic in your own words.
The purpose of your report is to
Provide Information
State the Facts
Your Teacher will advise you on the amount of writing
you are expected to do. Please visit
www.writingfun.com for greater detail on writing an
information report. www.edgalaxy.com
10. Further Information
For further information on Information
Report Writing Please visit
www.writingfun.com
For Further information on Summarising Text
please click here.
For Hundreds of Literacy Activities, Lesson
Plans and Resources please visit
www.edgalaxy.com
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