IPS/Butler University Laboratory School

So today we started talking about biographies and main ideas.  In school we have been talking about non-fiction for a couple of weeks now.  Now we are talking about non-fiction specifically biographies.  We read a book today that the children thought was fiction when we started because of the colorful pictures and story like plot, but then after we read it the children and I discussed that it was a biography because it was about a real person.  They really enjoyed it so I am excited to talk about it more tomorrow with them!

In Reader’s Workshop we just started having the conversation about the main idea of the story.  We have talked a lot about “What is the story about?” but we have not dived into usually the vocabulary of “What is the main idea?”  Today we read a non-fiction book about tornadoes (which the children were SO fascinated by), and then we talked about the main idea and what they thought it was.  Most said, “TORNADOES!”  But we talked about being a bit more specific to tell what the overall idea of the book was.  The main idea is that the book is giving us information about tornadoes so we are more knowledgeable about them.  I then asked the children to draw the main idea on a piece of paper.  They did a really nice job of drawing tornadoes.  Tomorrow we will explore adding words to the page so that it explains the main idea.

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