how to find main idea anchor chart

There are a few basic reading strategies that volition help students improve their reading comprehension. Teaching students how to identify the master idea of a text is an effective way to increment their understanding of the reading. The main idea is exactly what it says, the main or well-nigh important thought that the reader should take away from reading the passage. In other words, it is the bespeak that the author wants the reader to sympathize.

Teaching Main Thought

Before teaching students how to identify the main idea, teachers should brand sure that students already understand a few other reading concepts. This will help prevent students from confusing the reading concepts.

• Topic – whom or what the passage is about
• Topic Judgement – the judgement in the paragraph that states the main thought
• Author'southward Purpose – what the writer wants the reader to empathize
• Theme – a subject field or topic that is repeated throughout a text or multiple texts

Once students sympathize these topics, they are set up to begin main idea.

Visual Clues

For some books and passages, teaching students to look at visual clues is a great way to make up one's mind the main idea.  For example, if a text has photographs or illustrations, the reader should think about what is existence shown.  A book that is nearly the life cycle of a frog should have images of an egg, tadpole, frog, etc.  Another visual clue is the championship.  The title ordinarily tells the reader what the passage will exist about.  Back to the life bicycle of a frog – if information technology is about a frog, the championship will probably mention frogs.

The GIST Strategy

A normally used strategy for pedagogy master idea is GIST. GIST helps students to sympathize that the master thought of a passage is not a summary – something many students mix up. A summary is longer than the master thought. With GIST, students narrow down the primary thought to one sentence, ranging from 10 – xx words depending upon the grade level. That one sentence should country the Ane key idea that the reader should understand from the passage. GIST can be broken down into three steps:

• Step 1 –  Determine who or what is the focus of the text.
• Footstep 2 – What is the near of import thing almost the who or the what from step ane?
• Footstep three – Write a sentence using the answers from steps one ad two. That sentence is the principal idea!

Mentor Texts for Chief Idea

Every book or reading passage has a principal idea, only it is easier to place in some texts.  Nonfiction articles, such as a magazine or newspaper commodity, volition have strong primary ideas.  In addition, there are a number of film books that are excellent mentor texts for pedagogy main thought, including:

• Enemy Pie past Derek Munson
• The Proper name Jar by Yansook Choi
• A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni

Evaluating Students

When it comes to education reading strategies, there can be pressure for grading students on the strategy. In my opinion, I feel that grading students to heavily on whether or not they tin employ a strategy can actually backfire. Why are you didactics the strategies?  Yous want students to improve their reading comprehension. A struggling reader is merely going to close down if they know they are going to be graded on every step.

Instead of grading students on their application of the strategy, use your evaluation to help you create reading groups.  Students that clearly sympathize the strategy could be groups together and taught the next strategy.  Students that seem to be catching on could be placed together to do for more practice.  Your readers that simply are not getting it could be in a grouping to work with you lot on the strategy.  Remember, the end goal is to increase their reading comprehension, and that is what is near likely beingness graded.  The reading strategy is a means to attain the finish goal.

My school has been teaching these reading strategies, and the teachers wanted resource to hep students recall the strategies.  They also wanted to have a way to evaluate students' understanding of the strategies.  In order to run into the teacher needs, I created a resource for each strategy.  The resources come in printable and interactive notebook formats, and the strategy is taught over five days.  If you lot are interested, you lot can find the master idea unit in my store.

Source: https://teachingideas4u.com/2017/07/how-to-find-main-idea-in-3-easy-steps.html

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