Thinking about central ideas means thinking about the big picture, so Ms. Auble’s classes practiced central ideas by playing Pictionary! Here’s how it worked: teams read an article together about life in Sudan (each article was on a topic related to our class novel A Long Walk to Water.) They read carefully— looking at titles, headings, and repeated words—to start to form a mental picture of their central ideas even before the game began. Then, only one artist received the real central idea sentence from Ms. Auble. It was this student's job to only use their drawings (no words!) to get their team to guess the central idea. Combined with the artist’s pictures and their own knowledge of the text, teams guessed the central idea.
There were many good guesses, but even from a bad guess students learned important lessons about central idea. For instance, if teams focused too much on the detail in the drawing, then their central idea was too specific— central ideas are supposed to be broad. If teams couldn't guess because the drawing was missing an important idea or person or place, then their central idea was incomplete— central ideas shouldn't be specific, but they should still tell the whole story.
Along with Pictionary classes also played a main idea puzzle game. They had to read articles and then were given too many options for a main idea. They had to sort through the wrong options to find the best main idea.
After the puzzles, students were given an index card to reflect on how they feel about their ability to find main and central ideas. Students ranked their ability from 4 meaning I can do it on my own without any help to 1 meaning I am still unclear on how to find the main idea. This self-assessment helped students shape their own opinions about their abilities and resulted in meaningful reflection. For instance, one student noted that while they are good at remembering details, that zooming out to only the central idea was harder. This gave Ms. Auble the focus she needs to help this student moving forward. Great work to all artists and players!
