![]() Once students are pretty firm on the central message, it’s time for them to gain a little more independence! I like to start with one-page passages to have them find the central message, move to short stories, then to longer stories, and finally even books. ![]() How to Use Task Cards with Board Games 8. There are lots of ways to use task cards, I wrote a few blogs about them if you’d like more ideas:Ģ. The stories are short enough that students can have repeated practice in a short amount of time. Task cards work really well for teaching the central message. They seem more like a game than a worksheet ever would. The best part besides the focused practice is that kids are so motivated when they use task cards. Task cards give kids so much concentrated practice! I love to use them for just about every subject I teach. A few Pixar Shorts that I especially like for central message include: You’ll want to make sure though to preview them because some have much stronger central messages than others. I really like to use Pixar Shorts which can be found on YouTube and Teacher Tube. Find the Central Message in Moviesīesides books or stories, it’s fun to find the central message in movies or even sometimes in movie clips. So, biographies are a great tie-in for teaching the central message. If you look at Mother Theresa’s life, didn’t she show compassion or caring or love? What about Amelia Earhart’s life? I think she showed a lot of bravery and an adventurous spirit. His life’s theme might be equality or social justice or fairness. When reading biographies, you can’t help but notice how each person’s life has a central message or a theme. Kids love to read biographies! My students especially like the Who Was series by Penguin Books. Just like fables, they were often written to teach lessons, so they usually have a strong central message. Students read the fables in pairs and match them to the central messages on the board.įairy tales work well too. You can also do a matching game where you pass out a sheet with several fables on them (no morals though) and write three possible central messages on the SmartBoard. Then kids work in pairs to figure out the moral. One thing I like to do is to copy different fables without the moral listed at the end. There are several things you can do with fables. I also love that they are short, so you can do a few at one sitting if you’d like. One big reason is that fables were specifically written to teach lessons, so you know that automatically, they’re going to have a strong central message. Students will need to make inferences from the clues provided in the story to piece together the central message.įables are great for so many reasons. Main idea is for nonfiction, of course, and the central message is for fiction only.Īnother difference is that the main idea is more often stated, while the central message is implied, with the exception of some fables. You’ll also want to talk about the fact that the central message may be similar to the main idea but it is NOT the same thing. You could not, however, say that the central message was that Katie-Sue wasn’t afraid of Mean-Jean, because that is a small idea and is specific to the story. Those are all ideas that can apply to everyone. I make sure to explain that the central message is not specific to the book and is a big idea for all of us.įor example, in The Recess Queen by Alexis O’Neill and Laura Huliska-Beith, when Mean-Jean ruled the playground, but the new kid Katie-Sue wouldn’t be ruled, you could say the central message of the book was friendship, or bullying, or standing up for yourself, or courage. It is the life lesson the author wants readers to learn. When I introduce the central message, I tell students that it is the BIG IDEA of the story. One of the great things about anchor charts is that when you leave them up for a short time, they can become great visual references for students. I love making anchor charts and using them to emphasize key points. ![]() In this post, I’ll share some of the activities and strategies I use to help students master finding the central message: 1. Once students get it though, it is truly like a lightbulb has turned on and they will start seeing central messages in every story, whether you’re focusing on that or not (and I love that!). Most central messages are implied and it takes some inferencing to piece it together. Teaching kids to identify the central message is not an easy task.
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