Television Teachers...part one

During school vacations I tend to let the children watch more television than during school weeks. But after years of teacher middle-school kids I came up with some hints for parents on using television shows to build skills. Television comedies and dramas are a form of visual literature.  They share many of the same ingredients, and like literature, some stories are better than others.  Try to sit and watch with your child and use the commercial breaks to build their skills. I will share these with you once in a while to try with your kids at home.

Television Hint One:  Summarizing / Finding the main idea

Summarizing [rather than retelling every tiny detail] is a skill and it needs practice.  During the first commercial break ask your child what has happened so far in the show.  Help them put it into a sentence.  You could even write it down if that helps.  Do it at each break.  At the end of the show ask them to pick which sentence tells the main idea of that episode.  

Older kids:

Point out that if they put together the "main idea" sentence for each segment, they have a great summary of the entire story and that this is similar to the "plot outline" that authors use and teachers often ask kids to identify.  

For writing: [probably too much for regular use, but great to keep skills up during summer vacation]

      Help your child use the information from their segment sentences to write a paragraph about the show, using topic sentence [ex: the main idea of the show] , supporting details [ex: from the other sentences], and a closing sentence [ex: giving their opinion about how well the show achieved the main idea].