Are you looking for some new ways to teach main idea? These activities make it easier and engaging for your kids.
Here’s an super easy one for you: try using pictures to describe the main idea!
It’s not always obvious to students what the point of a text is. So many of them get lost in the details or what they thought was the most interesting thing.
Teaching about finding the main idea doesn’t have to be simply a one-time lesson.
This is a difficult skill that is best mastered through continual repetition by incorporating it into all subject areas and lots of revisiting.
Getting the Main Idea Lessons
- A Picture Is Worth 10 Words or Less
Younger students often need the support a picture gives, especially during first exposures to deeper literacy lessons. Meaning is derived from pictures that we use to support a text. This lesson is guaranteed to be a hit with your class.
Use book covers, illustrations…anything you can get your hands on. The key is that the illustrations are rich and vivid. In the image at the beginning of the page, I used a fun picture of my son at a beachside carnival.
Challenge the students to state what is happening in the picture in 10 words or less. They have to ignore the little details and get the overall meaning.
You could even have them set up as stations and the class could rotate through them. Allow time for sharing at the end and choosing the best sentence that describes each picture.
- Give Me Five
Use your hand to tap into the kinesthetic learning style for main idea activities.
Give students a paper hand and have them write five details from the text. Write the inferred main idea on the palm. Instruct them to fold their fingers over to make a fist. This shows that the main idea is what supports all of the details.
Differentiate it by having more able students make a bracelet to go around the wrist that is a short summary statement of the text. This is a great technique for main idea in reading comprehension! - Sort and Share
Prior to this reading comprehension lesson, you will need to have selected short non-fiction reading passages and have written 5-6 relevant main idea topics on separate pieces of chart paper. These should be placed around the room as students will be sorting their details on them.
Place students into small groups. Give each group an appropriate short non-fiction text and some sticky notes (short articles work best for this main idea activity). Ask them to read the text together.
Next, each student must write four or five sticky notes with an interesting fact on each one.
Once they have written their sticky notes, they will need to go around the room and find the appropriate main idea heading to put their sticky note on.
Sort the students again, but this time assign them a chart paper. They are to write a page about their topic that includes the sticky note details. These pages can be compiled into a class book.