Central Idea: Human Impacts

The central ideas are the most important points the author wants to make in a text. Once you have determined the overall central idea and the central ideas and supporting key details from different sections of the text, you are ready to develop a summary. After you have written your summary in the activity below, be sure that you can answer yes to each of these questions. If you can, you have written a good summary.

• Does it state the central idea for the text?
• Have you included key details that support the central idea?
• Does it contain only information from the text?
• Are all the sentences written in your own words?