Does anybody have some good ideas for teaching the main idea of a nonfiction text? My kids tend to need something somewhat hands-on that has them "doing" something, rather than just thinking.
I have taken newspaper articles (best from Kids magazines such as Time for Kids) and whited out the headlines. I set the articles up in centers and students had to move around the room and read each article. After deciding the main idea of the article, students had to write their own headline for the article. Hope this helps! Good luck!
You might have students try this activity with a selection that they can write on. Cross out all the unimportant words,what is left is the treasure or main idea. I use this for summarizing, but it would probably work with main idea too. Also you can assign each word the value of .10 and have them write a $1.00 or $2.00 sentence to tell waht the selection was about.
For social studies reading, or non-fiction text, I make a simple worksheet with each section headline and lines to write on underneath. After they read a section they cover what they just read a right one sentence telling the main idea. This isn't really doing something- but somehow just being able to stop after each section helps them stay on task and lets them easily practice reading non-fiction without being overwhelmed.
01-21-2007, 03:30 PM
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