The ultimate teaching hack for finding the main idea of any text
Teaching the main idea and key details of a text is a major standard in grades 2-5 in elementary reading. I don’t know about you all, but my teaching experience usually looks like this:
Define what main idea and key details are. Give students a series of articles and practice finding the main idea of each one for a week or two. Move on to another skill. Come back to do main idea another time. No one remembers what it is or how to find it. Spend a week reteaching a skill you already taught. Move on. Rinse and repeat.
If you’ve experienced the same thing, you are in the right place.
Instead of teaching our students how to find the main idea of an article, one article at a time, what if we just taught them the steps they need to take to find the main idea of any article or text?
A formula for finding the main idea? Sign me up!
The Main Idea Formula
Sit your students down with a mixing bowl, a wooden spoon, and a baking sheet. This can be a small group lesson or a whole group demonstration.
Look at an article. Ask students to read out to you what the title is and any headings that they see. Jot down each individual piece on a strip of paper, sticky note, etc. Add it to the bowl.
Go back into the article and ask the students to name and describe any text features in the article. Write them down on paper. Add them to the bowl.
Look through the article again, looking for words or phrases that come up over and over. Is “cheetahs” in the text 8 times? Is Polar Bear adaptations in every paragraph? What do we see showing up again and again? Add those words or phrases to the bowl.
PAUSE HERE. Ask students if they have any predictions about what the main idea is going to be. Note - you haven’t even started reading the article yet. You’ve previewed and skimmed. But, because you’re noticing the clues the author gave the readers, students will be able to make some solid predictions! This makes this task accessible, even to students who are not reading on grade level yet. :)
Go through the article and read one paragraph at a time. Pause after each paragraph and jot down a sentence or two about what each paragraph was about. These are your key details! Add them to the bowl.
Mix the bowl with a spoon. Dump it out on the baking sheet. Read aloud the ‘ingredients’ of the text, or have students take turns grabbing a piece of paper and reading them aloud to each other. Discuss what all of these pieces have in common.
Example: If the title was ‘Creepy Creatures’, there was a photograph of a tarantula and a scoripon, the headings were Scorpion, Tarantula and Vampire Bat, and we saw the phrase ‘this is what makes them creepy’ three times, and each paragraph described creepy features of each of the three animals…what does it sound like this article is mostly about? Answer: This article describes the traits of animals that many people find creepy.
Transferring the Main Idea Formula to Other Texts
Ok, so clearly you are not going to bust out a mixing bowl and spoon every time your students are asked to idenify the main idea and key details on a test. So, how do we get students to transfer these steps to other articles without all of the props?
Give them a highlighter! Instead of jotting down every feature or clue they see on a piece of paper, just have them highlight it. Ask them to jot down their predictions about what the main idea might be before reading. Then, read paragraph by paragraph and have students jot down their summary of what that paragraph was about.
Then, practice, practice, practice! Keep repeating these steps with new articles and texts until it is second nature for students to skim, predict, read, and synthesize.
What types of texts should I practice with?
I like to start with texts that have very clear-cut main ideas. Then, I just pull any nonfiction text that I have on had. Here are two of my favorites right now:
