MrsH Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 My dd is 9 and this is our first year with her at home. Over the course of the year, I've noticed that she has a very imaginative mind: she can create stories out of thin air, and freely shares opinions and ideas. She also can recall stories in great detail. She has trouble boiling things down to the main idea though. How do you teach someone that? We read a ton and I regularly ask her to condense her long thoughts into the main idea, but she just can't do it. Once she's gone through the whole thing I sometimes say "so ____ was the main idea?" and she tells me it's not, b/c I missed... every. single. detail. Ideas on how to teach her that? Related, I think, is that any kind of "why did he do that?" or "why does she say that?" is answered with her own opinions and thoughts, even when I try to redirect her back to the text. Suddenly all of those details fly out the window, and she's not connecting her answers to the text we just read. My guess is that these are fairly common issues, since they're pretty complex processes. However, anytime I review standards on what our 4th graders "should" be doing in school, these two things come up again and again. Any thoughts on what I can do to help her build these skills? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acurtis75 Posted January 19, 2012 Share Posted January 19, 2012 Writing with Ease teaches those skills. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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