English Language Development

Figure 6.26. Procedure for Identifying Main Ideas and Developing a Summary

This Is About/This Is Really About

Purpose:

Students work in the whole class, individually, and in groups to identify main ideas and

use them to synthesize or infer a summary.

Procedure:

• Ask students to silently read a passage and be ready to tell what the passage is about.


• Record all student ideas, details and main ideas alike.


• Have the class compare the ideas on the list to distinguish main ideas and details.
  Highlight those identified as main ideas. Some texts may require you to prompt
  students to make inferences about what the main idea may be.


• Have students individually decide which statements from the list capture all or part of
  the main idea.


• Have students work in pairs or trios to compare their ideas and agree on which to
  include or synthesize.


• Record groups’ ideas and facilitate another class discussion about why some ideas are
  or are not main ideas. Edit the list accordingly.


• Depending on the affordances of the text, challenge students to capture big ideas or
  themes by continuing to ask, “This is about that, but what is it really about?”


• Have students return to their groups and write a summary of the passage.
  Using the procedure described above for synthesizing main ideas into a summary,
  students reading the young adult novel Julie and the Wolves by Jean Craighead George might
  come up with ideas like those that follow.
  Process:

1. List, winnow, and combine their most important ideas.


2. Step back to decide what those ideas are really about.


3. Write a summary that incorporates the text’s big ideas and most salient details.
   Class List:
   Chapter 1 is about...

• a girl who runs away


• a girl who is lost in the tundra.


• an Eskimo girl.


• a girl who tries to escape a traditional arranged marriage.


• surviving the elements in an Alaskan winter.


• a girl who is unhappy about decisions being made for her.
  Group Work:
  Chapter 1 is about...


• a girl who runs away and is lost on the Alaskan tundra over a winter.


• an Eskimo girl who tries to escape a traditional arranged marriage.

618 | Chapter 6 Grade 8