Unit 3

Survivors!

An Interesting Connection

When you summarized readings, you sorted through all the details, looking for the main idea of the paragraph.


When you are writing, you do the reverse. You start with the main idea, and add details. You can see that summarizing and the writing trait ideas and details are strongly connected.

You need to do two things when you come up with an idea for writing – decide on your idea, and make sure your idea is not too big.


Click the coloured tabs for examples.

For example, if you wanted to write about dogs, which of these topic sentences would be better?

  • I like dogs.
  • I like German shepherds more than other breeds for several reasons.

“I like dogs” is a huge topic – you could write a whole book about that!

“I like German shepherds more than other breeds for several reasons” is a better one – you can discuss three or four ideas or traits of German shepherds which would be interesting to the reader.

Let's try another one.


Which of these topic sentences would be better if your idea was to write about your trip to China?

  • The best part of my trip was the day we went to the Forbidden City.
  • My trip to China was really interesting.

“My trip to China was really interesting” is another huge topic – way too big. The numbers of details you would have to add to make this idea interesting to your reader would take forever.

“The best part of my trip to China was the day we went to the Forbidden City” is a much better idea for a topic sentence. You could include enough details about this idea to make it really interesting.
Go on to the next page for assignments for this lesson.