This week we're going to continue with our work in summarizing readings, but now, instead of a paragraph, we're going to try and boil everything down to a single sentence. That single sentence, called the central idea, is often called the main idea. However, I find this confusing, since in our classroom we have already defined "main idea" as the one idea stated, explained, and proven in a logical paragraph. I used to call the central idea "the main idea of the whole thing," but that seemed kind of silly and long. So, central idea, which for us means "one sentence that expresses the single idea that a writer is trying to communicate to the reader." In an essay, we call it the thesis, which, of course, you know from last week's prewriting practices. However, central idea is one sentence that we will use for short stories, newspaper articles, nonfiction narratives, and essays.
How do you write one of these?
I'm glad you asked. You need to be able to decide whether something is a story or an informational reading. Then, you use the Who+What+Why formula to write a sentence.
Central Idea of a Story = Main Character + Conflict/Climax + Theme
Central Idea of a Informational Reading = Topic + What Happened + Why a Smart Person Would Care
Of course, the mastery list for this week (below) spells it out in much more careful detail.
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