Understanding the main idea of a nonfiction text is crucial for effective reading comprehension. However, it can be a challenging concept to grasp and requires ongoing practice and refinement. Here are a few strategies for teaching students how to identify the main idea of a reading passage and improve their overall reading comprehension skills.
How to Teach Main Idea
Lower level books often focus on a main topic. For instance, a book topic might be frogs while the main idea is frogs are amphibians (topic + idea). Children reading at lower levels might need to focus on finding the topic before advancing to finding the main idea.
In The Reading Strategies Book, Jennifer Serravallo suggest several finding the main idea strategies:
- Notice What Repeats: Notice what repeats throughout the text. Ask yourself, “Does that word tell me what the book is mostly about?”
- What? and So What?: The main idea is more than just what the text is about. What the text is about is the topic. To find the main idea, we find the topic and notice how the author writes about it. Then we ask: “So what?” or “So what makes this passage unique?”
- Shrink-a-text with a partner: Decide together what the main idea of a passage is, and try to shrink what you’ve read into just one sentence!
Finding the main idea of nonfiction text is a key to improving reading comprehension, yet it is not a concept that is taught once an mastered. Teaching main idea strategies and ongoing practice is needed to successfully apply this skill to different texts. Because of this, the resource I created gradually builds in difficulty and provides a necessary scaffolding for students as they learn to master this skill throughout the year! The levels and paragraph lengths gradually build from L 630 – 980.
My “Main Idea of the Week” pack includes anchor posters, main idea graphic organizers that can be applied to any text, 37 practice passages that increase in difficulty, and answer keys.
This resource gives students multiple opportunities to practice recognizing text organization. When students can see the organization of a written paragraph, they develop strategies for finding the main idea and can more easily identify the details.
*The first 11 passages ask students to find and restate the topic, main idea, and a detail. The other 26 increase in difficulty, and ask them to find and restate the main idea, a detail, and a related example of that detail.
I modeled this after the “step up to writing” process and more in depth reading and writing. Finding main idea strategies and organization while reading will also help students apply it to their writing.
Need more strategies for finding the main idea? We use these “Main Idea Task Cards” during our workshop time.
I created “Main Idea of the Week” based on the popularity of these smaller main idea of nonfiction text resources. (Each resource consists of unique practice passages this is a great precursor to using books to teach main idea.) The smaller resources can be found here:
Serravallo’s, Reading Strategies Book is a great overview of easy to apply classroom reading lessons. If you’d like your own copy just click on the picture below:
(This is an affiliate link, but I only suggest products I use myself. I earn a small percentage each time someone uses one of my links, which helps to support the blog. )
(This is an affiliate link, but I only suggest products I use myself. I earn a small percentage each time someone uses one of my links, which helps to support the blog. )
You might also like “5 Quick Tips – Getting Students to Follow Directions.”
Happy Teaching!
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