I would say that determining importance is important in getting to
the main idea, and establishing the main idea is helpful in
determining importance. Big help, huh?
Kids need to know both. Determining importance helps them remember
and retell stories. But knowing the main idea is useful in
recommending books to other people; it reduces things down to one or
two sentences.
Renee
On Feb 19, 2012, at 12:03 PM, evelia cadet wrote:
Are determining importance and finding the author's main idea the
same thing? If they are not, are they related? How? HELP!
Evelia
Sent from my Windows Phone
-----Original Message-----
From: Palmer, Jennifer
Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2012 9:23 AM
To: Mosaic: A Reading Comprehension Strategies Email Group
Subject: Re: [MOSAIC] Determining Importance
It's the testing culture Renee. We test low level and that drives
instruction. Think about main idea ... And it's relationship to
what we are talking about. Determining importance becomes a game to
guess what test authors feel is important...
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 19, 2012, at 12:01 PM, "Renee" <[email protected]>
wrote:
I wonder what would happen if we just asked a student, "Why is
this important?" I'm thinking in a context, for example, of my own
lesson, when the student asked how Washington's face got on Mount
Rushmore. These were third graders. I can easily imagine a student
ansswering, "it isn't" and I could also easily imagine a student
giving a reason, maybe something like, "well, because he was so
important that they put him on a mountain so how did that happen?"
I think it's a good question: Why is this important? It has that
lovely open-endedness that helps us learn what's going on the mind
of a student.
And by the way.... in my substituting travels to various
classrooms, I am finding every year that it's harder and harder to
get kids to answer open-ended questions with any kind of
confidence. That frightens me.
Renee
On Feb 18, 2012, at 1:49 PM, Palmer, Jennifer wrote:
I agree Renee. What I often do is spend a little time talking
about our purpose for reading first and letting that guide the
discussion ... I think it was Kylie Beers that uses the example
of a text that is a description of a beautiful home. An interior
decorator, a real estate agent and a thief, all would find
different things in the text to be important because their
purposes for reading would be quite different.
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be
entirely uneducated.
~ Alec Bourne
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Public Education:
It's a right, not a race.
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