Main idea and supporting details is one of those reading skills that sounds simple until you sit down to teach it. You ask your students what an article is mainly about, and the answer you get back is one word. “Sharks.” They aren’t wrong, but they have only told you the topic, and that isn’t the same thing.
When I taught 5th grade, my students needed this skill broken down into small steps, and they needed to practice those steps with a LOT of different texts. In this post, I’m sharing how I teach main idea and supporting details, the anchor chart I used with my class, and a few easy ways to keep the practice going all year.
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Topic vs. Main Idea: The Mix-Up I Saw Most
The most common mistake I saw was students giving me the topic when I asked for the main idea. It’s an easy mistake to make, so I like to clear it up before we do anything else.
The topic is who or what the text is about. You can usually say it in a word or two. The main idea is what the author wants you to understand about that topic, and it takes a whole sentence to say.
Here is a quick check I give students. If your answer is only one or two words, you have found the topic. Now finish this sentence: “The author wants me to know that…” Whatever comes next is much closer to the main idea.
- Topic: sea otters
- Main idea: Sea otters have clever ways of surviving in the cold ocean.
My anchor chart has two questions at the top to help with this: “What is the article mainly about?” and “What is another good title for this article?” I love the second question because a student can’t answer it with the topic alone. A good title has to say something about the topic.
How I Model Main Idea with One Short Paragraph
Before I hand out a full article, I start with one short nonfiction paragraph on the board. A single paragraph feels doable to students, and it lets me think out loud while they watch. Here’s one you are welcome to use.
Sea otters have some clever ways of surviving in the cold ocean. Their fur is the thickest of any animal, which keeps them warm in chilly water. When they find a clam or a crab, they float on their backs and crack it open with a rock. Before they sleep, many otters wrap themselves in kelp so the waves can’t carry them away. A group of resting otters is called a raft.
Then we work through it together.
- Read the paragraph all the way through. No stopping and no highlighting yet.
- Name the topic. Who or what is this about? Sea otters.
- Look for what the sentences have in common. Thick fur, cracking shells with a rock, and wrapping up in kelp are all ways that otters stay alive.
- Say the main idea in one sentence, in your own words. Sea otters have smart ways to survive in the ocean.
In this paragraph, the author states the main idea right in the first sentence. If you have read my post on how to teach paragraph writing, you know I compare a paragraph to a burger, and the topic sentence is the top bun. Finding the main idea is like taking that burger apart. Students find the bun, and then they check that everything underneath it really belongs.
Of course, authors don’t always make it that easy. Sometimes the main idea is in the last sentence, and sometimes it isn’t stated at all. Once my students can find a main idea that is stated, I cover up the first sentence and ask them to write one themselves. It’s a small change, but it gets them ready for texts where they have to figure out the main idea on their own.
Sorting Supporting Details: Important or Just Interesting?
Supporting details are the facts and examples that explain or prove the main idea. The tricky part is that students tend to pick the detail they like best, and that isn’t always a detail that supports anything.
Look back at the sea otter paragraph. A group of resting otters is called a raft. That is a fun fact, and it is usually the one students want to share first! It doesn’t tell us how otters survive, though, so it’s an interesting detail and not a supporting detail.
The question at the bottom of my anchor chart is “What facts support the main idea?” To answer it, we test every sentence against the main idea.
- Does thick fur help otters survive? Yes.
- Does cracking open shells with a rock help otters survive? Yes.
- Does wrapping up in kelp help otters survive? Yes.
- Does being called a raft help otters survive? No. It’s just interesting.
This makes a great sorting activity. Write each sentence from a paragraph on its own sticky note or sentence strip. Then have partners sort them into two piles, “supports the main idea” and “just interesting,” and explain each choice to each other. If students get stuck, have them take the sentence out and reread the paragraph without it. When the paragraph still makes its point, that sentence was probably just interesting.
Moving from Paragraphs to Whole Articles
Once students are comfortable with a single paragraph, it’s time for a longer text. An article has sections, each section has its own main idea, and all of those together point to the main idea of the whole article. That is a lot to hold in your head, which is why I put it on an anchor chart.
The big box at the top is for the main idea of the article. The three boxes under it are for the main idea of each section, and the smaller boxes below those are for supporting details. (As you can see, my anchor charts are not fancy. You can see more of them in my post on my not-so-Pinteresty anchor charts.)
We fill the chart in with sticky notes, and we save the top box for last.
- Read one section of the article.
- Write the main idea of that section on a sticky note and add it to the chart.
- Find the facts that support it and add those underneath.
- Repeat for each section.
- Look across all of the section main ideas and decide what the whole article is mainly about.
The chart at the top of this post shows what it looked like when we read an article about exotic animals. The three sections gave us “Lots of people have exotic pets,” “Exotic animals are dangerous,” and “It’s a lot of work to take care of exotic animals.” When we put those together, the main idea of the article was easy to see: exotic animals should not be pets.
Two other things help a lot at this stage. First, teach students to use the section headings as clues. Second, connect main idea to what they already know. If your students write summary sentences for each section of a passage, they are already finding the main idea of each section. And if they have learned the five nonfiction text structures, they can use the structure to predict the main idea. In a problem and solution text, for example, the main idea almost always names the problem and how it gets solved. (I have a whole list of nonfiction text structure activities if you need them.)
A Main Idea Graphic Organizer for Any Text
After we have filled in the anchor chart together a few times, students need to do the same thinking on their own. For that, I use the Main Idea and Supporting Details page from my Fiction and Nonfiction Reading Response Activities.
It follows the same steps as the anchor chart. Students record each section heading, ask themselves “What was this section about?”, and find at least two details that support each main idea. At the bottom, they write the overall main idea of the text.
I love that it works with any nonfiction text. You can pair it with your science book or with the article you were already planning to read this week. The same resource also has pages for Topic Sentences and Supporting Details, Summarizing, and a “What’s the Main Idea?” page for fiction, so students can practice the skill in more than one way. Every page comes as a printable, in Google Slides, and as an anchor chart.
Keep Main Idea Practice Going All Year
Main idea isn’t a skill you can teach in one unit and check off your list. Students need to come back to it again and again with new texts, or it fades. Here are a few simple ways to keep it going.
- Ask the two anchor chart questions with everything you read. “What is this mainly about?” and “What is another good title?” work with a read aloud or a science lesson, and they only take a minute.
- Put a main idea page in your reading centers. Your centers don’t have to match the skill you are teaching that week, so this is an easy way to review.
- Use a daily reading review. My Daily Reading Review gives students one passage per week and a handful of text-dependent questions each day, Monday through Thursday, with a short quiz on Friday. Each week has one focus skill while still reviewing the others, so main idea keeps coming back. If a student is struggling with it, you will know without giving a separate assessment.
You can find the Daily Reading Review for 2nd through 6th grade here.
Free Reading Resources to Get You Started
Try it for FREE! Just click the button below and I’ll give you access to my freebies, including a sample of the Daily Reading Review.
I also keep a list of my FREE reading resources for teachers, with passages and text-dependent questions you can use for main idea practice right away.
I hope these ideas make teaching main idea and supporting details a little easier in your classroom this year! If you try the sticky note anchor chart, I’d start with a short article that has clear section headings. It makes that first try go so much smoother ๐
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