Unit 6

What Are Our Connections to the Past?

Activity

Summarizing Strategy

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Now that you understand a writer’s purpose, observe how the summarizing strategy is applied in a graphic organizer to The Search for the Northwest Passage.

To summarize a piece of writing, identify the following important information:

• the overall main idea or theme of the piece
• the key ideas the author uses to create that theme
• the supporting details that provide relevance and believability to the key ideas

The Search for the Northwest Passage Graphic Organizer demonstrates how to apply the summarizing strategy.

• the main idea of this selection may be expressed as “The search for the Northwest Passage was extremely difficult and hazardous, but enabled explorers to learn about Canada's North.”
• the three key ideas are
• It was very difficult to travel through the north.
• Explorers like Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, and Baffin tried but did not find passage in the 1600s.
• A second group of explorers began searching again in 1815.
• two or three supporting details are identified under each key idea