Writing Workshop Main Idea

I am going to share a few different things I am teaching that connects to writing workshop. 

This is the first time I have taught many lessons using the word MAIN IDEA. I do think that no matter how many different mini-lessons you do, a lot of students struggle to keep the main idea. They will be writing a book about a birthday and in the middle of the story, you come to a page that says, "I love my cat."

 My class LOVED the lesson below. 

I told the class I would show them pictures, and we would put the pictures connected to the main idea of recess on the left and pictures not related to the central idea of recess on the right. You can see the x means not recess.

Same lesson different day, but changed the main idea for birthdays. This lesson is also planting the seed of writing topics.

On a different day, we had to Guess The Main Idea? 

I didn't know if having students create their own Guess the Main Idea sheet would be too difficult. I did do a lesson on making your pictures detailed. You can see the quick anchor chart below

 The Three BIG Bold and bright

 

You can see I made a stick person on the left and told them that being in kindergarten you need to have the 3. Your picture should be big, bold and bright. 

We talked about how silly I would look like as a purple stick person.

Guess the Main Idea by KC

I gave students the topics

samples

Basketball

Halloween

Recess

The Beach

At choice time yesterday a little girl came up to me and gave me this circle map she made.

If you look in the center, you can see a backward question mark.  Her brother had a birthday party over the weekend. The cake is blue with a big on the top (left side), and she made a black birthday hat and a Thomas the Train at the top.  On the right side, she made streamers. 

here for  main ideas