Main Idea and Stuff Like That

I just started working with a child once a week. It is great to get my toes back in the water and work with kids, but not the classroom and all the paper work glory. 🙂 I am sure you understand what I am talking about, am I right?

One of the skills we are working on is main idea.

I thought I would share a few ideas from our sessions to see if they give you any ideas!!

First thing was to do a little brainstorming to activate some prior knowledge. We created a circle map and wrote what we thought and wondered about parrots inside. Then we listed words we though we *might* see in a book about parrots.

I also went over a few tricky words.

The next thing we did was read a few pages from this Reading A to Z book

As we read the book we checked off any facts that were correct and any words that were in the book from our predicted list.

After we finished reading we talked about main idea. We defined it and then I modeled how to find the main idea using one paragraph from the book. Then, I asked the child to find the main idea of another paragraph and highlight it. Next, I asked the child to go back and underline in pen any text evidence that support the main idea. I explained that these are called supporting details.

It went over really well. Kids love pens and highlighters! Anything to make it work, right?

I found these FREE task cards on Proteacher made unseen001. You can get them if you create a FREE account with Proteacher. I printed out a few of them.

I used these as game cards. I made a simple game board using Creative Clips board game clip art.

We used two sided counters as game tokens and flipped a penny to move (heads was 2 spaces, tails as 1 space). We flipped the coin, drew the main idea cards from above, and answered them. I also mixed in a few dare cards. These went over REALLLLY well :0). Click on either picture to get the game board and dare cards.

Then we did a one of the sheets from Creekside Teacher Tales’ Main Idea Practice pack as a quick little check. We are not done yet. We will continue to work on this next week! 🙂

And ONE more thing…

I need to announce the winner of the 10 cm Geometric Shapes from EAI. The winner is

Cora Baldwin

Yahoo! Congrats! I have already sent an email! Thanks to all that entered!

Mandy Gregory

Mandy Gregory is a 2007 and 2012 Teacher of the Year. She has taught Kindergarten- 4th grades in both the general education and inclusion settings. She is currently a 1st grade Special Education teacher. She is the owner and creator of Mandy’s Tips for Teachers website (www.mandystipsforteachers.com) and has over 13 years of teaching experience. She is married with two beautiful children.

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