Discuss the concept of main idea in a story or other reading material. Middle schoolers identify the main idea in a passage using a technique that eliminates unnecessary words not relevant to the main idea.

Throughout history, the growth of big cities has resulted in the destruction of ecosystems. In the case of Chicago, IL, a grassland that was once home to bison, deer, wolves, and foxes quickly became a booming city of over three million...

There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes of a local news program. Read this passage independently or as a whole class to learn about all the different people that work hard to bring us the news. Afterward, young learners determine...

You can mix almost any subject with an arts curriculum. Find out how to use drama to find the main idea of a literary text. You'll read a story, and then learners will make tableaus showing what happened, or what they think will happen...

Acquaint your class with informational text through a close reading. First, examine a couple of pages together, looking at text features and content. The whole class focuses on marking down a brief summary of each paragraph before...

After reading a text, one way to find out how much your class comprehended is to ask your pupils to summarize. This worksheet helps class members prepare for writing a summary of a nonfiction text. They note down the topic, up to eight...

Blow your pupils' minds with information about some of the world's most awesome natural occurrences: volcanos. Class members read a short article and respond to included questions. The focus of the resource is on understanding and...

Summarizing text is a balancing act between being brief but thorough. You need to be short and to the point, but also cover all the important details, a task that presents a challenge for many young learners. In this lesson based on the...

Second graders practice using photos to support the main idea. In this reading comprehension lesson, 2nd graders read and explore the photos in the book, Amazing Tigers! Students examine the photos to identify and support the main idea....

Expose your class to Waiting for the Biblioburro, narrative nonfiction that will act as the bridge between ficiton and informational texts to come. Class members do a close reading of the text, looking at excerpts instead of the whole...

Augment your eighth grade language arts curriculum with a thorough set of reading comprehension activities and assessments. Focusing on a variety of skills, including vocabulary in context, text structure, main idea, and author's style,...

This learning exercise that accompanies a reading of A Beautiful Mind includes over 20 questions that address theme, fact and opinion, supporting details, characterization, and quote comprehension.

Are you a friggatriskaidekaphobic? An excerpt from an article about the fear of Friday the 13th is used as the basis of a reading comprehension exercise. The five questions require readers to employ several strategies (drawing...

Here’s a reading comprehension assessment that will capture the interest of your learners. Stink bugs and the danger they pose to farmers is the subject of the passage, while the eight questions ask readers to infer, predict, summarize...

Read to understand! Sounds great and your third graders will read to understand several interesting facts about Great Britain. They read, identify key details in the text, and write to answer five comprehension questions. Learning to...

With this interactive resource, students learn about the main idea skill and practice the skill.

Select an article that explores people of another culture. After reading it as a class, distribute copies of this worksheet. It asks for a brief summary, encourages readers to make text-to-self connections, and asks learners to identify...

In this main idea worksheet, students read about main idea and then match main ideas to topics. Students match 10 main ideas to their topics.

In this main idea worksheet, students answer ten multiple choice questions about finding the main idea and supporting details.

This story is bound to motivate your class. Learners read a story called Elena by Diane Stanley. The story is about a young woman who marries for love but is soon widowed during the Mexican Revolution. She takes her children to...

In this reading review for grade 2 (2.4) worksheet, 2nd graders answer 25 multiple choice comprehension questions in standardized test format.

In this reading review for grade 5 (5.3) worksheet, student answer 25 multiple choice questions in standardized test format for 7 reading passages.

Third through fifth graders discover the importance of reading and plan a service project to provide books to children. First, they read the book The Important Book and then they brainstorm about the importance of reading. Afterward,...

Readers are asked to use the provided graphic organizer to list the main idea and supporting ideas in a passage about the inventions of Benjamin Franklin.