Service dogs can assist people with disabilities beyond just vision or hearing impairments. Through specialized training, these dogs aid those who use wheelchairs, have autism, need seizure or medical alerts, or have psychiatric disabilities by performing individually tailored tasks.

1. Paraphrasing and
Summarizing
Ms. McGhee’s Third Grade

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.
•

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Your Turn!
Paraphrase: Paraphrase these two
sentences into one.
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: Summarize this paragraph.
Remember to paraphrase and reduce the text, using
only important details.
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.