Polk Brothers Foundation Center for Urban Education at DePaul University
De Paul University: Center for Urban Education: Analyze Nonfiction: Central Idea [Pdf]
This graphic organizer will help students analyze nonfiction pieces. Students will use the graphic organizer to guide them as they identify the central idea and supporting details.
Curated OER
Mc Graw Hill: Informational Text: Determine Central Ideas and Supporting Details
Read a short informational text and determine the main idea and supporting details. Click to check your answers then click on Practice.
Other
Learning Farm: Compare and Contrast Informational Texts
In this narrated tutorial, students are presented with information about first and third points of view, then read two passages about the same event and answer questions that compare how the topic is presented. After completing the...
Learning Farm
Learning Farm: Common Core Standards: Text Structure in Literature
Practice comparing and contrasting the structure of two or more texts and analyze how the differing structure of each text contributes to its meaning and style. Choose test mode or game mode!
E Reading Worksheets
E Reading Worksheets: Text Structure
This resource focuses on text structure by defining the types of organizational patterns and providing examples of each. These are followed by a list of links to practice activities on text structure and main idea, as well as some videos.
ReadWriteThink
Read Write Think: Creating Magazine Covers to Summarize Texts
In this lesson plan, students will examine the ways in which a magazine cover's headlines and graphics express the main ideas of its articles. They will then use an interactive tool to create covers that summarize chapters of...
Love To Know Media
Your Dictionary: Lesson Plans on Summary Writing Skills
This article focuses on how to help teachers write lesson plans that will aid students in learning to write clear, concise summaries of movies and literary works.
Other
Dade Schools: John Ferguson: Informational Text Features
A table explaining different text features including graphics, visuals, and sections found in text.
Reading Rockets
Reading Rockets: Teach Expository Text Structure to Facilitate Comprehension
Expository text can be challenging to young readers because of the unfamiliar concepts and vocabulary it presents. Discover ways to help your students analyze expository text structures and pull apart the text to uncover the main idea...
Louisiana Department of Education
Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: English Language Arts: Grade 6: Steve Jobs
Sixth graders will explore the role of failure in finding success. In this set, 6th graders learn that success takes hard work, deliberate practice, and the ability to learn from failures and persevere. Students explore how an author's...
Louisiana Department of Education
Louisiana Doe: Louisiana Believes: Ela Guidebooks: Summarizing
This strategy helps students refine their understanding of texts to meet reading expectations and prepare for writing about texts.
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Pre Reading Activities for El Ls
Pre-reading activities can engage student interest, activate prior knowledge, or pre-teach potentially difficult concepts and vocabulary. They also offer a great opportunity to introduce comprehension components such as cause and effect,...
E Reading Worksheets
E Reading Worksheets: Main Idea: Test 1
In this reading test focusing on the main idea, students read passages and answer questions concerning the main idea.
Curated OER
Ccss Literacy E Handbook: Literature: Summarize
An explanation of summarizing a selection along with a link to a model summarizing activity.
Quia
Quia: Crct Practice: Main Idea
An interactive quiz with seven multiple choice questions over four short reading passages. Questions focus on identifying the main ideas and supporting details and choosing an appropriate summary. When finished, students can submit...
Quia
Quia: Reading for Facts
This interactive quiz assesses students' reading comprehension skills of informational text passages. Students will read 30 short passages and answer question about a detail for each.
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Journey North: Reading Strategies: Main Ideas and Supporting Details
Learn how to identify the main ideas and supporting details in an informational text by using a list of guiding questions.
Annenberg Foundation
Annenberg Learner: Journey North: Reading Strategies: Paraphrase / Retell
Learn how to paraphrase a text by using a list of guiding questions.
Other
Reading Quest: Strategies for Reading Comprehension: Summarizing
Teach students to summarize nonfiction text with these lesson plans. Includes worksheets and activities that can be downloaded and printed.
AdLit
Ad lit.org: Classroom Strategies: Summarizing
Summarizing teaches students how to take a large selection of text and reduce it to the main points for a more concise understanding. Upon reading a passage, summarizing helps students learn to determine essential ideas and consolidate...
SMART Technologies
Smart: Making Inferences
Inferencing is finding clues and using background knowledge to determine an explanation from facts in a passage or story. It's "reading between the lines" of a story to understand what the author doesn't state.
SMART Technologies
Smart: Identifying Main Ideas & Details
This lesson operates on the Scaffold Instructional of Release model (I do, we do, you do). Students will use the main idea and supporting details to expand understanding of a variety of texts.
Wisc-Online
Wisc Online: Identifying the Main Idea
This resource defines main ideas and is an interactive way to assess a student's ability to correctly find main ideas from paragraphs.
TES Global
Blendspace: Main Idea Activities
A learning module that includes six links to videos, images, graphic organizers, and websites that reinforce the reading skill of finding the main idea.