How+to+Teach+Main+Idea

=What is Main Idea, Theme and Big Idea?= = = =[|Video on how to Teach Main Idea]=

=Main Idea Song= = = =[|Main Idea Song]=







=Establishing the Main Idea=

What Is It?
An important task of reading comprehension is to determine the importance and meanings of individual words, sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, and entire texts. Readers decipher the meanings of words within sentences, of sentences within paragraphs, and so on. As readers begin to grasp main ideas, they better understand the purpose of the details—which further strengthens their understanding of those main ideas. In understanding the concept of a "main idea," it is useful to distinguish between the following terms: topic, main idea, theme, topic sentence, and purpose. The **topic** of a text is the subject, or what the text is about. A topic can be expressed as a noun or a noun phrase. Some examples of topics include recycling, mammals, trees of New England, and names. An **idea** is what you say about a topic. Ideas, including the **main idea**, are expressed as sentences. If someone asks you to identify the main idea of a passage and you respond with a single word, you haven't said enough; you've probably just identified the topic. Some examples of main ideas include: > Recycling is expensive in the short term, but yields long-term savings.

> All mammals are the same in certain ways.

> The trees of New England are the most beautiful in the world.

> It's no fun when someone makes fun of your name. A **theme** is an idea that is repeated throughout a text or collection of texts. For example, "the importance of family in shaping identity" is a theme that can be found throughout literature. A **topic sentence** is the term used to identify the sentence in a paragraph that contains the main idea. Conventionally, the topic sentence is the first sentence in a paragraph, but not always. It can be at the beginning, the middle, or the end. While some paragraphs don't really have an easily identifiable topic sentence, some have more than one. (Which is the topic sentence in this paragraph?) Nevertheless, topic sentences are useful in determining the relationship between main ideas and **supporting details**. For example, consider the following: > All mammals are the same in certain ways. They all have lungs, hair or fur, and the ability to nurse their young. These two sentences obviously bear an important relationship: the first carries the main idea while the second supplies details that support the main idea. Finally, we often define **purpose** as "what the author is trying to say"—as if an author is never quite capable of saying what he or she means. The work of reading comprehension is best understood as a joint enterprise between author and reader. Authors can't communicate properly by themselves. They need readers to understand them. An author's purpose—or even the main idea—is not always obvious and is often open to interpretation. An author is expected to do his or her best to construct text in a way that readers will understand, and except in the case of certain kinds of mystery novels, we trust that an author will not try to trick us. In expository prose (non-fiction), an author typically tries to make his or her ideas clear and explicit. Still, we filter even the most direct messages through our own experiences, knowledge, beliefs, and understanding of the meanings of particular words. Reading fiction is more subjective because main ideas are seldom stated explicitly and are often intentionally hidden, as when they are filtered through the persona of an "untrustworthy narrator" like Nabokov's Humbert Humbert in //Lolita//.

Why Is It Important?
Identifying main ideas and working out the relationship between main ideas and supporting details is really the essence of reading comprehension. If we cannot understand what an author is trying to say or why an author has chosen to provide us with certain details, then we are not understanding the text. Identifying the main idea and determining what is important are prerequisite skills in summarizing a text. Summarizing requires readers to determine important—and discard unimportant—details and to put the main ideas in their own words. Summarizing has been shown to be an important strategy in helping readers improve their abilities to construct meaning. (Rinehart, Stahl, & Erickson, 1986) Identifying the main idea teaches students to discriminate the important information from the less important details in a text. The ability to identify essential ideas and salient information is a prerequisite to developing insight. (Harvey, 2000)

How Can You Make It Happen?
The process of working out the relationship between main ideas and supporting details is not something you can teach students one morning and then move on. Rather, the pursuit of meaning should be a daily focus, something you talk about every day and build into every text-based lesson from the time that students can begin to understand what a "main idea" is (some time in [|first grade]) through high school and beyond. In other words, while you //can// and //ought// to explicitly teach strategies for finding the main ideas in texts (e.g., look for ideas that are repeated frequently), conversations about the meaning of texts, and the more difficult question of purpose, should be part of the ongoing thoughtful classroom discourse that characterizes high-quality instruction. When beginning instruction in finding the main idea, it is important to establish a common language and a common set of expectations. Students should understand and be able to use terms such as //main idea, topic, topic sentence, supporting detail,// and //author's purpose//. Second, it is important to model the process of determining importance and choosing the main idea of a text. Use the [|think-aloud strategy] to model how you determine the main idea and which details in the text support your conclusion. Students should understand that the search for meaning in texts is often hard work, requiring considerable mental effort. Provide students with tools, such as graphic organizers, for analyzing texts and documenting their analysis. Third, there is sometimes more than one correct answer. One student's idea of an author's main idea may be legitimately different from—and equally acceptable as—another's. Finally, and most important, establish the expectation that students will provide "text-based arguments" for their expressed beliefs about the text. If a student wants to claim that Huck Finn is an unfortunate victim, then expect him or her to point to those parts of the text that support this claim. Here's an example of how to organize a discussion of main ideas and supporting details. First, copy a paragraph such as the following on the board or some other place where every student can read it. > Of all the inventions that had an impact on the Chinese culture during Medieval times, the most important was printing. Before there was printing, all books were copied by hand. Books were therefore rare and expensive. The Chinese began printing in the A.D. 500s. They carved characters from an entire page on blocks of wood. They then brushed ink over a wooden page and then laid a piece of paper over the block to make a print. In 1045, a Chinese printer invented printing using moveable type; the books that were made using this process helped spread knowledge throughout China, to a degree that had not been possible before. Ask students to identify the topic or subject of the paragraph. (A good answer might be "Printing" or "The Chinese invention of printing.") If students are having trouble, you can think aloud and help them by saying that most of these sentences relate to printing, either how it was done or what it helped to do. Next, ask students to locate the topic sentence and identify the main idea of the paragraph. (The first sentence is a good example of a topic sentence. The main idea of the paragraph is probably that printing was the most important invention because it allowed for the spread of knowledge throughout China.) Next, ask students to identify the supporting details. Remind them that in some paragraphs, there may be sentences that are not really related to the main idea and that some details are more important than others. Point out that information about how the printing was actually done seems less important than the fact that books were previously made by hand and were therefore rare and expensive. The actual date that moveable type was invented is less important than the (implied) fact that this, in some way, made it even easier to mass-produce books. Consider asking students why this might be the case. As a way of getting further into the idea that some details are more important than others, have students make lists of the sentences in a paragraph //in descending order// of importance. Then, ask them to discuss their lists in pairs or groups.

Reading
Give students a piece of informative writing that relates to a unit you are studying or an author you are reading. Have them create a word web to identify the topic, the main idea, and the supporting details of the passage.

Writing
Write a short paragraph that does not contain a topic sentence and have students write a topic sentence for that paragraph. Then, assign each student a topic that he or she knows something about. Challenge them to write a short paragraph that relates to the topic but doesn't have a topic sentence. Pair students and have each student write a topic sentence for his or her partner's paragraph.

Math
Have students choose a section or chapter from their math textbook and read the introduction to the section or chapter, recording the main idea and supporting details in a graphic organizer. Have groups of students use their graphic organizers to introduce the section or chapter to the rest of the class.

Social Studies
Have a "Current Events" day during which you bring interesting articles about current affairs from a newspaper into class. (You can also assign this as a homework assignment.) Distribute articles to pairs of students and have them use their graphic organizers to record the topic, the main idea, and the supporting details. Then, have the pairs use their graphic organizers as notes to help them summarize their article for the class.

Science
Assign students a paragraph from their science textbook. Have each student identify the main idea and supporting details of the paragraphs and then record the supporting details in a word web, leaving the main idea section blank. Pair students and have them exchange papers. Ask them to fill in the topic and main idea sections of their partners' word web based on the supporting details.

Lesson Plans
[|Main Idea: Chrysanthemum]This lesson is designed to introduce primary students to finding the main idea as a reading comprehension strategy. The lesson asks students to choose the main idea for sections of the story from a few possible choices. This is the first lesson in a set designed to teach students how to find the main idea of a story. [|Main Idea: Animals Born Alive and Well]This lesson is designed to help primary students continue working to find the main idea as a reading comprehension strategy. The lesson asks students to make lists of what mammals have in common and to choose the story's main idea. This is the second lesson in a set designed to teach students how to find the main idea of a story. [|Main Idea: The Great Kapok Tree]This lesson is designed to continue working with primary students to find the main idea as a reading comprehension strategy. The lesson asks students to complete graphic organizers to find the main idea of each page and to then tell the main idea of the story. This is the third lesson in a set designed to teach about the main idea of a story.



Lilly loves everything about school, especially her teacher, Mr. Slinger--until he takes away her musical purse because she can't stop playing with it in class. Lilly decides to get revenge with a nasty drawing of "Big Fat Mean Mr. Stealing Teacher!" but when she finds the kind note he put in her purse, she's filled with remorse and has to find a way to make things right again. Children will sympathize with Lilly's impulsive mistake and laugh uproariously at the witty and expressive pictures of the very human mice. In a starred review, //Publisher's Weekly// called this book "sympathetic and wise." (Ages 4 to 8)

Young worrywarts (and their parents) will see themselves in Wemberly, and be relieved that she, too, worries about playground equipment ("Too rusty. Too loose. Too high."), sure-to-be-inhabited cracks in the wall, whether she will be the only butterfly in the Halloween parade, and, of course, whether school will be dreadful in every way. Henkes's Lilly-style illustrations are sweet, expressive, and loaded with funny, inventive details that invite close perusal with every reading. (Wemberly's roller-blading grandma, for example, is wearing a T-shirt that says "Go with the flow.") We're not worried about whether this book will become a classic--it will! (Ages 4 to 8)



PreSchool-Grade 2 Fearless mouse Sheila Rae is not afraid of anything, and she flaunts her confidence by confronting real and imagined terrors daily (her imagined ones are particularly creative and funny). Finally Sheila Rae decides on a new challenge: she will go home from school a new way. When she gets hopelessly lost, her courage falters, but scaredy-cat little sister Louise has been surreptitiously following Sheila Rae, and proves her own bravery by leading her sister safely home. Louise mimics her sister's undaunted style all the way home (``She growled at stray dogs, and bared her teeth at stray cats''), thus providing a strong language pattern for new readers. Bouncy watercolors in spring-like colors with some pen-and-ink detailing highlight Sheila Rae's bravado in an engaging and amusing way, and Henkes provides Sheila Rae, Louise, and their school friends with highly expressive faces. Children will respond to both the humor of the story and the illustrations and to the challenge of facing fears head-on. Librarians can share this one with small groups or recommend it for patrons without fear, for children will love it.



For children who are facing the arrival of a new sibling, //Julius, the Baby of the World// makes for great biblio-therapy. At first, big sister Lilly thought it might be fun to have a new baby in the family. But when her parents repeatedly coo, "Julius is the baby of world," Lilly's mouse hackles begin to rise. Soon the jealousy is too much for her, and she embarks on a rejection campaign that is hysterically funny, but also comforting for siblings who probably feel just as much resentment but would never go to Lilly's extremes.



The clinical name is //transitional object//, but for young children, a beloved blanket is more like a lifeline. And that's exactly how Owen feels about his baby blanket, fondly named Fuzzy. The Owen-Fuzzy relationship is cruising along smoothly until a nosy neighbor, Mrs. Tweezers, leans over the fence and asks his parents, "Isn't he getting a little old to be carrying that thing around?" With kindergarten just around the corner, Owen's parents wonder if he should in fact relinquish his prized Fuzzy. Kevin Henkes uses his signature mouse characters and jewel-tone watercolors to explore the antics and foils of one mouse-boy, one rag-blanket, and two parents wondering how to help their son kick the habit. This is what Henkes does best--playfully bringing childhood fears and feelings to the surface while portraying real-life parent-child tensions. Mrs. Tweezers, a real sourpuss, is no help at all. She offers terrible over-the-fence advice, such as dipping Fuzzy in vinegar (as if to cure a nail-biting habit) or stealing the blanket in the night.