What's Important and Why
Key 5: Determining Importance
Key 6: Synthesizing
Seven Keys to Comprehension
By Susan Zimmermann and Chryse Hutchins
“Start by helping your child retell the most important parts of a story and then pare it down to a simple summary. In fiction, you meet the characters, figure out where and when the story takes place, and are drawn into the plot by dramatic tension: a discovery, an accident, a mystery, a dilemma. This tension keeps you turning pages to find out what happens. A synthesis occurs as you summarize what has happened and what it means to you. (130)”
Books for Determining Importance and Synthesizing
Picture Books: Koala Lou, Mem Fox
Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf, Lois Ehlert
Wild Horse Winter, Tetsuya Honda
Monarch Butterfly, Gail Gibbons
Three Brave Women, C. L. G. Martin
El Chino, Allen Say
And So They Build, Bert Kitchen
Encounter, Jane Yolen
Passage to Freedom, Ken Mochizuki
Rachel’s Journal, Marissa Moss
Longer Books: Sarah, Plain and Tall, Patricia MacLachlan
Missing May, Cynthia Rylant
Lewis and Clark: Explorers of the American West,
Steven Kroll
Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Eleanor Coerr
Dear Mr. Henshaw, Beverly Cleary
A Boy at War: A Novel or Pearl Harbor, Harry Mazer
Matilda, Roald Dahl
My Louisiana Sky, Kimberly Willis Holt
Hatchet, Gary Paulsen
Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt
Some questions to ask your child:
· What was your purpose for reading this piece? How did your purpose help you figure out what was most important?
· Look back over this part. What has the author done to signal what is important to remember. Great-you’re using the picture and caption to help you determine what is most important. What other text feature helps lift important information off the page?
· As you read the passage, what was most important here, what is essential to remember?