For this week’s Main Assignment, you will compose a Summary Paragraph of a reading from a common college-level American Government class: How the Iroquois Great Law of Peace Shaped U.S. Democracy _ Native America (1).pdf
Purpose: You will be asked to summarize many reading assignments throughout your college career. Your professors will assign summaries for you to do because they know that if you can accurately summarize something, then you clearly understood it. This is because when we summarize, we put the main points of the text we are reading in our own words – and in order to put something in our own words, we have to be able to understand it.
A Paragraph might seem like a short assignment, but this assignment is actually assessing four important skills:
Your reading comprehension
Your ability to summarize
Your ability to follow the writing process as you plan and draft a paragraph and, of course
Your ability to put together a paragraph that meets the technical requirements for academic writing.
A quick word on Reading Comprehension and college-level reading assignments. Very often in college-level texts, the author IMPLIESLinks to an external site. the main point of the essay but doesn’t include a sentence that says : “Hey readers! Look over here! This next sentence is the main point!” Instead, readers are expected to use their college-level reading skills to DEDUCELinks to an external site. the meaning based on how the author has constructed the essay.
Here are the steps you should follow for this assignment:
You’ll want to refer back to the Paragraph Focus: Summary Paragraphs and keep that content in mind
Read the essay How the Iroquois Great Law of Peace Helped Shape U.S. Democracy while following the instructions you learned in the very first module of this course. Set a Purpose for reading (you are reading in order to summarize), use good Pre-Reading and During Reading strategies (follow the guidelines given for reading for summary on the Paragraph Focus: Summary Paragraphs).
Once you have good notes and have deduced the Main Point and Key Supporting Points of author Terri Hansen’s essay, follow the process you learned in this module for Planning and Drafting a Paragraph.
Here is a reminder of what a Summary Paragraph should look like:
Summary Paragraph
Main points only – no details
Topic sentence expresses the main idea of the piece and mentions the author and title.
Supporting Sentences mention the other key ideas in chronological order.
Use transitional language throughout the paragraph: first, then, finally, etc.
Condense – use fewer words than the document you are summarizing
No quotes (those are details)
here is the link for the doc
