Retrieval and summarising
English · Key Stage 2 · The School
Retrieval: the answer is written down
Some questions want facts that are literally in the text: "How old was the boy?" Scan for the detail, then quote or copy it accurately. Marks are lost by paraphrasing loosely — if the text says "almost eleven", answering "eleven" is wrong. Accuracy IS the skill here.
Summarising: shrink without losing
A summary keeps the main idea and drops the examples. Read the paragraph, cover it, and say what it was about in one sentence. If your sentence contains a detail that could vanish without changing the point, cut it. A good test: could someone who has not read it still tell what mattered?
Which kind of question is it?
"What colour was the door?" is retrieval — it is stated. "How do we know he was nervous?" is inference — it is implied, and you must quote the clue and explain it. Deciding which kind you face before you write stops the commonest error: answering a thinking question with a copied line.
Paragraph: "Emperor penguins breed in the Antarctic winter. The male balances the single egg on his feet for over two months without eating, losing almost half his body weight." RETRIEVAL: "How long does the male hold the egg?" — over two months, quoted straight from the text. SUMMARY: "Male emperor penguins endure extreme hardship to incubate one egg." Retrieval copies; summary compresses. Both are right answers to different questions.