PR-6218IRE Reading for Success - Book 3

Comprehension
Main idea
Summarising activities
Use this activity to help your pupils practise the process of identifying the main idea of a story.
Materials:
• board and chalk or interactive whiteboard • passage of text or a children’s short story
1. Begin the lesson by telling your pupils a story about a recent event in your life. After telling the story,
ask the pupils to retell the events they remember.
2. Draw an idea web on the board. Ask the pupils to think about the general idea of the story. What was
it about?
3. Explain that this is called the main idea and write it in the centre of the web. Have the pupils name
supporting details from the story as you write them in the surrounding circles on the web.
4. Read a passage of text to the class or have the pupils read it
main idea
themselves. Ask them to identify the main idea.
5. To assist the pupils with differentiating the main idea from the
supporting events, select a sentence from the story. Ask them,
‘Is the story all about this one fact?’
6. Continue in this manner until the main idea has been identified.
7. Review the fact that the main idea of a story is the one thing that
all the other events support.
Insignificant details
This activity helps pupils to separate important details from insignificant details.
Materials:
• passage of text or children’s short story • cardboard or large sheets of paper • marker
1. Explain to the pupils that when telling the main idea of a story, it is necessary to include important
details. Some details are important to include; others are not as important and only used to provide
additional information or description.
2. Have the pupils read a passage of text.
3. Check for comprehension by asking questions relating to the story.
4. Have the pupils name things they can remember as you write their responses on paper or cardboard.
Then review each sentence.
5. First, identify the sentence that represents the main idea.
supporting details
Viewing sample
6. Then review the remaining sentences to determine whether each detail is important in explaining the
main idea or whether it is insignificant.
Irrelevant details
Have your pupils practise identifying irrelevant information by completing page 160. To complete the page,
each pupil reads each passage of text and finds the one sentence that does not make sense.
Prim-Ed Publishing – www.prim-ed.com 159 Reading for success