Main Ideas and Details

Transcription

1 Discern main ideas and concepts presented in texts, identifying and assessing evidence that supports those ideas. Introduction In this lesson, you will learn how to find the main idea in a text, as well as the supporting details. The main idea is what the text is mostly about. The supporting details help tell about the main idea. For example, the main idea of an article might be that bee colonies have different kinds of bees. might tell you that these kinds include the queen bee, the worker bees, and drones. In many kinds of writing, authors tell about ideas. They take an idea and explain it with facts, opinions, and examples. These are the details that support the main idea. In literary writing such as short stories, authors write about things that happen these are the ideas. They then support these ideas with descriptions and details about the characters, the setting, and the events. Sometimes the writer clearly states the main idea. For example, an author might say, Bee colonies are made up of different kinds of bees. But sometimes the main idea isn t stated. If it s not, look for supporting details. These are clues. Think about what they tell you. They will help you find the main idea. The supporting details answer questions about the main idea. They tell who, what, where, when, how, and why. This gives you extra information. By identifying supporting details in a text, you can also determine information that is missing or not important. To understand a text, identify the main idea and supporting details. The questions below can help you. What facts tell who, what, where, when, how, and why? Main Idea What is the text mostly about? What opinions support the main idea? What examples support the main idea? 1

2 Modeled Instruction Read this story. Then fill in the blanks to answer the question below. The Food Pyramid 1 Nate placed what seemed like the thousandth can of corn on the stack. The shape of a pyramid was finally beginning to form. 2 About an hour earlier, Nate had been chasing his big sister, Molly, through Food City. Nate raced around a corner and plowed straight into a wall of canned corn. Nate quickly began restacking the cans. 3 Molly made faces at Nate as he placed the last can on the pyramid. Nate felt his anger rise, but then he gazed at the pyramid that had taken him a long time to rebuild. He took a deep breath and whispered to himself, Just ignore her. What is the story mostly about? Who is the story mainly about? The story is mainly about. What happens to this character? He knocks over some cans of. Why does this happen? He is chasing. Where does this happen? In a. How does the character fix his problem?. ANSWER: This story is mainly about Try It Reread the passage to answer the question. What is one detail that tells more about this main idea?. 2

3 Modeled Instruction Read this paragraph. Then fill in the blanks to answer the question below. Honeybees The Honeybee Club needs your help. They are asking people to start their own backyard honeybee hives. Honeybees are disappearing fast. That s a problem. Our fresh food supply depends on honeybees. Plants are pollinated by bees. This is how plants produce fruits and vegetables. Without more hives, honeybees could disappear. If bees disappeared, our food supply could disappear, too. What is the main idea of this passage? A Honeybees live in hives. B Our food supply depends on honeybees. C Plants need to be pollinated. D You can start your own backyard beehive. What is the main idea of this passage? What does the Honeybee Club want people to do? They want people to Why is it important for people to help honeybees survive? Because if honeybees disappear, our could disappear, too.. answer: Choice Try It Reread the passage to answer the question. Which details in the passage best explain why our food supply depends on honeybees? 3

4 Guided Practice Think About It Read the passage. Use each Think About It to guide your reading. Happy Atom Decay Day! Who is this story about, and where is it taking place? What details have you read so far about Stella? Where is Stella going and why? What is the main idea of this paragraph? What details explain how Stella figures out her age? Where is Stella now? 1 Stella fastened herself tightly into the spaceship s seat. She braced herself for entry into the wormhole. She hated the feeling of traveling through wormholes. These tunnels in space were the only way to get somewhere fast. Stella always liked to travel fast. 2 Distance in space is not measured in miles but rather in years. It takes hundreds of thousands of years to travel across the universe. Stella s thoughts drifted. She wondered what life was like before scientists discovered wormholes. Travel between galaxies would have been impossible. How could people just stay in their own galaxy? How boring! 3 Stella was going home. Her parents were throwing her an Atomic Decay Day party. People stopped celebrating birthdays many years ago. It had become too confusing. 4 Calculating the passing of time when you traveled through time and space was difficult. Time was constantly speeding up and slowing down. You could never be sure how old you were. Eventually, people kept track of their age by how much their carbon atoms had decayed. 5 Carbon atoms lose energy at a steady rate, so atomic decay made for the perfect clock. Stella s atomic clock had reached a milestone. It was Earth year Stella was finally old enough to trade in her Galaxy Hopper for a full-sized Universe Runner. 6 The effects of the wormhole were lessening. In just a few more seconds Stella would reach her home ship. She couldn t wait to see her friends! 7 Most of them hadn t seen each other in person for many years. They usually just sent each other three-dimensional images. It was the only way to keep in touch with friends who lived thousands of years apart! 4

5 Guided Practice Hints Look at paragraph 4. What do you learn about how people in the future keep track of time? Use the Hints to answer the questions below. Circle the correct answers and provide supporting details from the passage. 1 What is this passage mainly about? A Space travel has caused people in the future to keep track of time by atomic decay. B Stella is celebrating her Atomic Decay Day by going home to see family and friends. C Stella hates traveling through wormholes but likes that they get her across the universe quickly. D Stella and her friends keep in touch by sending three-dimensional images to each other. Look at paragraphs 1 and 5. What do they tell you about the setting of the story? 2 Where is Stella while she is traveling? A in a spaceship in the future. B in a race car in the future. C in an airplane in another universe. D in a wormhole in the past. In paragraph 4, what do you learn about how people keep track of their age? With your partner, share and discuss your answers and supporting details. 3 Based on information in the story, a reader can tell all of the following about Stella except A how she feels about traveling through wormholes. B who is throwing the Atomic Decay Party for her. C how old she actually is in regular Earth years. D the name of the model of her current spaceship. 5