What’s the Big Idea?
When children enter elementary school, and teachers attempt to teach them about identifying the main idea of a story, kids will often try to summarize the entire story. The main idea and a summary are two different things. Instead of telling everything that happened, the main idea has two important elements.
You can help even very young learners begin to recognize the main idea by asking two simple questions. “Who (or what) is the most important person (thing) in the story?” and “What is the most important thing about that person (thing)?” When a child has identified those two simple characteristics, they have told you the main idea.
With very young children, it isn’t necessary to make them reword their answers so that they make sense in a well-formed paragraph. Simply identifying the main idea is enough for little learners. By asking the two questions mentioned above on a fairly consistent basis, your child will gain valuable experience in identifying the main idea even before entering elementary school. And, although they may not be ready to understand terms such as “main idea”, “main character”, “conflict”, and “resolution”, they are able to tell you the Big Idea with simple questions from you.
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Written by BRWI Staff on February 2, 2011
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