Main Topic & Key Details
Identify the main topic of a multi-paragraph informational text, determine the focus of specific paragraphs, and explain how key details support the main idea
What a learner can do afterwards
- Identify the main topic of a multi-paragraph informational text and state the focus of individual paragraphs
- Describe how specific details and facts in the text support the main idea
- Explain how events, ideas, or steps in a text are connected (e.g. cause-effect, sequence, comparison)
1 · Read
You can find what a short text is mostly about. A longer article has paragraphs, or groups of sentences. Each paragraph does its own job. Ask what each part is about. Then look for a main idea that joins the parts. An article can have more than one main idea. Here, we practise finding one idea that fits the parts.
An article called 'How a Sunflower Grows' has four paragraphs: a seed, a shoot, a young plant, and a plant with flowers. Together they explain how the plant grows. Reading just the young-plant paragraph would leave out the earlier and later steps. Read each part to understand the whole process.
Key details help explain a main idea. Check each detail: does it help show that idea? Count only the ones that do. A panda gripping branches supports an idea about climbing. Eating bamboo does not. Read every sentence, since helpful details can come anywhere. To find an idea, ask what the helpful details share.
First and next show order. A comparison shows how things are alike or different. Because and so can show cause and effect: one event makes another happen. A text may leave those words out. 'A cup tipped over. Water spilled onto the table.' The cup tipping caused the spill. Order alone is not enough: check that one event explains the other.
Read all the details. What idea do most of them explain? Use that idea when choosing a title or adding a detail. One fun fact may be too small to cover the text. A title about everything may promise too much. A fact can be true yet not help this idea. The main idea can come first, last, or be left for you to work out.
Find each paragraph's job. Join the ideas, and check which details help explain them.
2 · Watch
Take it off screen
Where it sits
Where this leads
23 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.