Fifty Words for the Noticeboard
A candidate must cut the following source to a 50-word item for the school noticeboard, read by students and parents:
'The after-school science club has run on Tuesdays since 2019. In the last year, about 40 per cent of members were in Year 10; the register shows 312 of the 800 recorded attendances were Year 10. The club meets in Lab 2, which holds 45 people and has no working fume cupboard, so practical work is limited to demonstrations. Two of the four volunteer staff leave in July. The club costs $12 per term per student and the budget covers 30 students; last term 38 students attended at least once.'
The item must state the main problem and must not state anything the source does not support.
1. Write the 50-word item, and explain which figures you kept and which you discarded.
Read the worked answer
Item (42 words): 'Science club, Tuesdays, Lab 2: practical work is limited to demonstrations because the room has no working fume cupboard, and the club can fund only 30 students while 38 attended last term. Two of four volunteer staff leave in July. Help needed.'
Figures kept: 30 and 38. These two numbers are the problem - demand has outgrown the budget by eight students. Without both, the reader cannot see why the item exists.
Figures discarded: 45 (room capacity), $12 (termly cost), 2019 (start date), and the Year 10 data. Capacity and price are not part of the shortfall; the start date establishes the club's age but decides nothing for the reader.
On 'about 40 per cent' versus '312 of 800': the exact register figure is preferable because it can be checked and because 'about 40 per cent' invites the question 'of what?'. Neither belongs in the item - the Year 10 share answers a question a noticeboard reader is not asking - but if that point had to be made, 312 of 800 would be the honest version to use.
2. Name two details you dropped and justify each by reference to the reader's needs rather than to length alone.
Read the worked answer
1. The 2019 start date. It is not irrelevant in general - it tells a reader the club is established - but it does not help anyone decide or act. A summary is organised around what the reader must do or know, not around what the source happens to contain.
2. The Year 10 attendance data. This answers a question nobody on the noticeboard is asking. It is the kind of detail that appears in a report because it was easy to collect, not because it changes anything.
The criterion to state explicitly: relevance to purpose. The item exists to explain a problem and prompt a response, so every detail earns its place by helping a reader understand the shortfall or act on it. Cutting the start date frees words for the 30-versus-38 mismatch, which is doing real work.
A weaker answer would say 'to save words' and stop there. Length is the constraint, not the reason: a detail can be short and still useless.
3. The draft ends 'Help needed.' A classmate objects that this states something the source does not say. Advise the candidate.
Read the worked answer
The classmate is right, and the distinction matters. 'Help needed' is not supported by the source, which says only that two of four volunteer staff leave in July. It does not say the club is short of help, and it does not say what kind of help is wanted. A reader cannot act on it.
The fix is to make the inference from the evidence, in the reader's words: 'Two of four volunteer staff leave in July; the club needs replacements.' That is derived - the reader can see the reasoning - rather than invented.
Two related traps to avoid.
- Do not write 'the club may close'. Nothing in the source says so; it is a dramatic inference the evidence will not carry.
- Do not write 'only two staff remain'. The source does not say the other two stay either - it says two of four leave.
The principle: summary must not add facts, but it must not simply quote either. The candidate's job is to compress and connect what is there, and to stop at the edge of it.