Summarising Duck Overboard Article

L.I. To look for keywords and phrases
L.I.   To identify the main ideas in the text

For this task I had to summarise an article called duck overboard, the article is about a bunch of plastic toys that were lost overboard when a storm hit the boat that was transporting them. The plastic toys then travelled around the world only being pushed by the ocean currents, an oceanographer called Curtis Ebbesmeyer realised how good these plastic toys would be for charting the ocean’s currents. Since then there has been a $100 reward for finding one of those toys. The toys have travelled far and wide from Australia and even to Antarctica!  

I did this by reading the article, answering the questions and using skimming and scanning to find all of the relevant information.

Summarising the Main Idea

Good readers notice key words.  Here are some clues to help you find key words:

• Key words are directly connected to the topic
• Key words are often repeated in the title and the text
• A key word helps you to remember an important idea

Use this table to help you summarise the main ideas in a text in your own words.  It is important that you use your own words to show your understanding and to avoid plagiarism.  If you don’t know what some words mean, look them up.

Keywords from the title Overboard

Keywords from subheadings

New words I need to look up

Read the text and record key words/phrases that answer these questions:

What? Storm knocks plastic ducks overboard.

Where? In the ocean & countries all over the world.

When? January 1992.

Who? Curtis Ebbesmeyer.

Why? To chart the ocean currents.

How? The ocean current push the ducks all around the world.

Now using the words you wrote down summarise the text in 25 words or less.

A storm spilt thousands of plastic toys into the ocean, since then the ducks have travelled all around the world and helped chart ocean currents.