I think whether a piece of writing has a main idea depends on the type of
writing. A history book about one subject (not text books) has a main idea.
I'm thinking about Doris Kerns Goodwin's book on Lincoln because I just started
it last night. It has a main idea and probably many other ideas -- after all
it is about 700 pages!
In history writing, the main idea is called the thesis.
Jan
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> I am going to back us up just a little before beginning discussion on the
> last chapter. I had the pleasure of getting to hear Ellin speak in person in
> Pennsylvania last week and one point she made was that there is no such thing
> as
> "main idea". She teaches children that main idea is a construct test makers
> made up and that students, when faced with a main idea question must try to
> figure out what the test maker thinks is important. She explains to children
> that there are important ideas...but these might vary based on the readers'
> reason for reading.
>
> The question that immediately popped into my mind was related to expository
> text structures. Isn't there a text structure that is organized main idea
detail? Isn't that newspaper writing where we get the most important idea
> first?
> I know lots of simple nonfiction for primary children seems to be organized
> main idea detail---just think of Scholastic News, Weekly Reader and Time for
> Kids.
>
> So---when I came home I picked up my copy of To Understand and backed up to
> chapter seven. Figure 7.2, page 182 does not have "main idea detail" listed
> as
> a text structure, but the description of the descriptive text structure
> seems to me to BE "main idea-detail". I thought of descriptive text
> structure
> to
> be narrative in style but each idea to be of relatively equal importance.
> So...what I want to know is this:
> Do you think we need to teach main idea as a text structure? Especially
> since lots of school and test reading seems to be organized in a narrative
> style
> with the most important ideas first. Or is this misleading to kids who will
> think that there is only one important idea to be learned from a particular
> text?
> What do all of you make of this?
> Jennifer
>
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