This slideshow focuses on adding details to a paragraph. It covers ways to add details, primary and secondary support points, a flow chart organizer, moving from the topic sentence to a final essay, and strategies for generating and...

This tutorial focuses on supporting details using a video of a paragraph from a book showing the topic sentence and two strong, reliable, supporting details. This is followed by a slideshow that stresses the need for variety in the types...

This site from the Wilfrid Laurier University provides a complete guide to paragraph writing. Contains many examples along with details and structures that are often left out when students write.

This resource provides practice for students in locating where a main idea sentences is located in an informational paragraph. Guided questions are provided for each practice passage.

[Free Registration/Login Required] A two-instructional activity unit on main idea and details through which students use the topic sentence to identify the main idea of a paragraph and categorize details as main idea or supporting. With...

This is a one-page nonfiction excerpt from JFK's Inaugural Address on January 20, 1961. It is followed by an open-ended question which requires students to provide evidence from the story; it includes underlining the most important...

[Free Registration/Login Required] A series of three lesson plans designed to teach students to identify main ideas through headings and chapter titles, and then to write appropriate titles of their own. Lessons are based on the books...