Practicing Main Idea in Fiction Books

We have been working on main idea in our books.  To help us with our main idea, we found the beginning, middle, and end of the book.

We read Three Cheers for Tacky and then used our flip book to help us find the beginning, middle, and end.  We focused on looking at what mostly happened at the beginning and what mostly happened in the middle.  I often find that my kids pick one thing at the beginning, middle, and end instead of summing it all up.  We did this activity together.  I've been trying to provide a lot of modeling for my class with this topic. 

We practiced using the title of the book and using the beginning, middle, and end of the story to state the main idea.  We found what all of these things had in common to state the main idea.  The kids helped me do this, and they did a great job!

How do you review main idea in your classroom? 

Reading Superpowers!

My classroom is FULL of super readers!  We learned all the different reading strategies using the reading super powers from Lucy Calkins' units of study.  Then, each student showcased his/her best power by creating a poster to share what the power does.  Each student set up their poster and got in their super power poses ready to share with other students all the different powers we use when reading.   

We had students from all different grades come and learn about our powers.  We LOVED sharing with them, and it helped us remember our powers.  It also allowed us to practice our listening and speaking skills. 

I bought the "capes" from Dollar Tree.  I used the tablecloths, cut them in half and each student used one for their cape.  Then, I used paper to make their masks.  We had so much being super readers!