Making Main Idea Fun Again!

I have posted a lot about main idea over the course of this year, mainly because my 3rd and 5th grade groups have been working with this skill. A few weeks ago, we finished working with it, but I am just now getting around to posting about it. After some work with main idea, we spent one session having a little fun!

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Animals Nobody Loves Invade Book Talk Thursday

What?! Animals that nobody loves?! Are you kidding? I found this book in a class I had to take and instantly fell in love with it. It has such great information about why people don't like the animals in the book and amazing pictures, but I knew it would also be perfect for teaching main idea with my fifth graders. I used Animals Nobody Loves by Seymour Simon to help them see the difference between topic and main idea. {Affiliate links inserted to help fund book purchases for this blog.}

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Main Idea: It's All in the Details

I have found that our students can't grasp the concept of main idea, no matter what we do with them. We seem to beat it in their heads, but they just don't get it. This year, I am trying something a little different, and the third graders had a blast with it. Nothing fancy, nothing super fun, just mind blowing!

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Uncovering Main Idea in Fiction

It seems so easy to focus on getting to the main idea in nonfiction.  Sometimes the title alone gives us the main idea.  But what about fiction?  We have to dig a little deeper to get to that!

I finally started working with students again now that assessments are over.  My third and fourth graders always need a little help with finding main idea in fiction.  To start off, I used several different methods to help them out.

First we took some time to take these Russian nesting dolls apart. Why?!

It showed the students in a concrete way how to dig deeper into main idea.  We have to think about the entire story, not just one or two sentences.  We talked about the 5 W's {Who, What, When, Where, Why, and I included How as well}.

 Before reading the chosen book to the students, I gave each of them a sticky note with one of the words on it and told them to listen for their information and write it down when I finished reading the book.

I started out by reading a familiar story to the students.

I love using fairy tales to help introduce and teach comprehension skills.  They don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about the story since they already know it.  And I LoVe this version of The Three Little Pigs for so many reasons.  The best is that it is the full version of the story, not just the wolf eating the pigs or the pigs running away, but the wolf continues to try to get the third pig.

Here are the sticky notes my students wrote.  {Remember, these are struggling readers and writers.}

From these, we created a summary which also told the main idea of the story.  The students seemed to enjoy doing this!

Stop by on Friday to join in a fun blog hop as we share a mentor text for fall, a forever freebie, and a big giveaway!  The fun starts at 6 AM EST Friday morning!

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Summarizing and Main Idea with Headings

I have been spending a lot of time with my students working on important reading skills and strategies.  With the big Virginia SOL testing around the corner for these students, we have hit some really hard!

One area all of our students in our school struggle with is summarizing.  They either want to just retell everything by focusing on every single detail or not including enough information.

While working with my students last week, we focused a lot on both main idea and summarizing.  This activity was super simple, and they really enjoyed doing it!

I simply used the article above from World Book Kids to do the activity.  I was super excited that the headings were not included, and there was plenty of room to write.

We read the passage all the way through together.  Since this was the first time we did this, I did some modeling with the first part.  I reread the first two paragraphs to the students.  While reading, I highlighted the most important words.  We then talked about the words and what they all had in common.

After talking about the words and thinking about what they had in common, we worked together to come up with a good heading for the parts of the passage.  Once we had good headings for the parts of the passage, we wrote them above those parts and discussed what we had written.  Did they make sense?   Would someone be able to tell what they would learn about in each part?

I loved this activity because it was something we could easily do and discuss.  It made them think about the important words, not the entire passage.  It helped them focus on the main idea.

This also helped them to understand the purpose of headings in nonfiction.  They wrote their own, so now they know what they are for.  Hopefully, when they read, they will focus on those headings before they read any further.

How do you help students with summarizing and main idea?

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Book Talk Thursday ~ Poetry Collections

April is National Poetry Month, so I have decided to highlight two poetry collections for

I really enjoyed using Eric Carle's Dragons, Dragons and Eric Carle's Animals Animals with my second graders this week.

The books are both full of various poems by different authors.  In Animals, Animals, there are many poems written by many authors about different animals.  And in Dragons, Dragons, there are many poems about mythical creatures such as the unicorn, centaur, and minotaur.  In both books, the pictures are Eric Carle's works.  I love the way the pictures show the reader a lot about the creatures in the books.

There are many uses for the books.  Children can actually learn about the creatures in the poems.  They give background information about them and even describe them.  This makes it perfect for activities in visualizing.  There are also many great poems that would be great for main idea and details.  Though we don't always think about poems giving a lot of information, many of these tell the readers about the creatures.

I read poems to my students from the books and had them draw pictures of what they saw.  I didn't show them the pictures before reading the poems, so they could truly visualize what the poem described.  Here are their pictures of Ganesha, Ganesh.

And the actual picture from the book.

Kids really enjoy hearing and reading poetry.  What a great way to enhance their reading in such an enjoyable way!

I hope you will link up this week with a book review!



   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

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Five for Friday ~ September 19, 2014

Hello, everyone!  What a week!! I am ready for another Five for Friday with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching!

1.  I finally finished helping with the 1st - 3rd grade reading assessments!  BUT I have been helping with the 4th-6th grade reading assessments this week!  If I have to hear about fossils one more time, I might scream!  I heard the passage ready to me three times in 30 minutes!!!

After next week, we start kindergarten reading assessments!!

2.  I am so thankful for Fun Fridays!  Today I worked with my first and second graders on digraphs and played a little game from Jennifer Drake with them.  It really helped them to remember those tricky pairs.

3.  My third graders worked on main idea with me this week.  Head on over to Adventures in Literacy Land for a peek at how we made sense of main idea in fiction.

4.  My third grade groups have started on their Cloze Paragraphs I created for the year.  They actually look forward to doing these.  Today was Talk Like a Pirate Day, so we did the pirate one today.  I love how these make them think about what they are reading.

5.  My son's school is doing a Boosterthon fundraiser this year.  They are trying to get pledges from every state and have 41 states so far!  He also wants 2 more pledges this weekend to get a fun and crazy hat.  {Yeah, like he needs it!}

If you click {here} or on the image above, and pledge to his walk, you can choose $10 worth of products from my TPT store!  Just email me at readerstars@gmail.com if you pledge, and I will get your products to you!

How was your week?  Link up with Kacey at Doodle Bugs Teaching to let us all know!

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Time to Clean Up!

No, I am not talking about preschool, but my TPT store!  I have been selling since 2008, and I have some items on there that were, well, not up to par.  My Main Idea and Detail Concentration Game is one of my best sellers, and I usually get pretty good feedback on it.  But a couple of times, people have wanted it to be more "creative" or needed an answer key.  These are both things I overlooked when trying to get started.

So, I spruced it up with a cover page, cutesy cards, an answer key, and a graphic organizer!  It has been priced at $1.50, but with my extra hard work, I am going to raise the price.  BUT, you are in luck!  I am keeping it at $1.50 through Sunday, January 20.  After that, the price will go up to $2.00.  I have also posted this in my Teacher's Notebook Shop as well.

So, head on over and grab it by clicking here or on the picture below.  My students have really enjoyed playing the game without the cutesyness, but I think they will enjoy it more with that cute factor going on!

I am also participating in a fun 100 follower giveaway at Mindful Rambles.  Stop on by and see what goodies you can grab!  I am giving away two products from my store!

 

Also, stay tuned for my big 400 follower giveaway coming soon!
Until next time!

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