Teaching Main Idea

If you can find it, the book “Learning Disorders: A Cognitive Approach” by Kirby & Williams (ISBN 0-921099-04-5) has a case study about this, which they determined was a problem with relational thinking in a 14yo. The case study starts on page 206.

The first set of techniques they used worked on developing relating and integrating skills. An example of relating would be having the child say how two words or pictures are alike or different (the McGuiness book, “How To Increase Your Child’s Verbal Intelligence” contains a lot of activity ideas like this). An example of integrating would be to look for a pattern in a set of numbers, picture or words, and then make up more examples or sets. (The SET game might be good for this.)

The second half of the approach worked on summarization skills. There were 10 steps to follow: (1) figure out what the passage is mainly about, (2) cover up text and write down this main idea, (3) with the main idea in mind go back and underline the most important parts of the text and cross out the unimportant details, (4) write down the important ideas that have been picked out, in any order, on slips of paper, (5) look for patterns in the ideas, or ideas that go together, (6) reorder the ideas, getting rid of the ones that say the same thing as others, and putting together those that are about the same things, (7) make a plan for putting all of the remaining ideas into a few sentences, making sure that the main idea is still clear, (8) write the summary, (9) check to see that nothing important has been left out, nor anything unimportant included, (10) rewrite if necessary.

They listed the book “Teaching Reading Comprehension” by Pearson & Johnston as providing excellent suggestions.

Mary

Chances are he needs a technique like Visualizing and Verbalizing by Lindamood-Bell. Are his problems in slow and labored decoding and he loses the comprehension or is it more that he can read ok but his vocabulary is weak? I would go over all the vocabulary words with him in detail, tie them to some knowledge that he may have already. Have him use them in sentences correctly. As you go over the paragraphs you have to back up and have him Visualize and Verbalize each sentence at a time. Then when you have linked all the sentences one right after the other steer him into the main idea. Give him a senario where he has to choose the right answer by your giving him some choice and contrast in your responses. If he is coming up blank through choice and contrast you give him choices is it hot or cold, have him clarify and also go through his sentences that he has Visualized to get the main points. On a side note inference is the last of reading comprehension to come for kids. There are some good books that LMB clinicians use published by SRA and written by Richard Boning. They deal with the main idea, teaching inferences, sequencing etc..

Does he have language issues?… because this type of problem can be caused by speech and language delays.

I’d stay away from worksheets when teaching main idea. I find those “main idea” reading worksheets unhelpful.

Try reading him a story - maybe a very short biography about a famous person. Then ask him what the book was about. Stay away from the phrase “main idea”. For a while at least, I’d stick to reading out loud to him either very short biographies or fairy tales or short fictional stories. Ask him questions as you read and after you’re done reading. What’s happening in this story? What’s the most important thing that happened in the story?

A way that works well with preschoolers is to read a book like The Hungry Caterpillar. Put out a few things one of which has something to do with the story and the others don’t. Ask him to pick out the object that has something to do with the story and to tell you why it does. For hungry caterpillar, you could put out something the caterpillar ate and two things unrelated to the story. Always ask him why he chose what he chose.

There are really a million ways to encourage children to understand main idea or “big point” but worksheets usually aren’t one of them.

You’re right, showing him examples of main ideas is probably too big of a conceptual chunk to break off at one time. When I had students with this problem, we would start by making lists of things and having them figure out the “big idea” that covered them all (pizza, spaghetti, bread, corn — food; Maine, Mississippi, Alabama, New York — States) and vice versa. We’d do a fair amount of practice with that ‘til it was easy. Then we’d have a longer list that he could sort — so it might have New York, pizza, Maine…. so he’d read a word and think about how it connected with other ideas. Start out with really obvious dfferences and get more refined as you go.

Diana Hanbury King has a neat book with lots of language ideas in her _Writing Skills for the Adolescents_ book that can be had pretty cheaply from EPS books (www.epsbooks.com).

There are some “main idea” exercises on my website at http://www.resourceroom.net/Comprehension/index.asp (scroll down for them) and other comprehension things you might be interested in.

There are also books with lots of paragraphs from Jamestown Press for developing “single skills” such as main ideas — usually we had to break it down a little further at first. We’d start out having the kiddo read the paragraph and say the topic. Sometimes the kid would grab a tiny detail or something too big — at that point we’d walk through each sentence and ask “is this about that?” becuase, after all, the main idea is supposed to be what most, if not all, of the sentences are about. Once the kid got the “one-word” topic (it’s about “whales”) and could do that readily, it was time for the big jump — so what about whales? Is this about how they eat? How big they are? Here it would be really easy to zone in on a random detail — but walking through the sentences really helps. And it also really helps if the kiddo’s been doing those main idea exercises I described, so they’re familiar with thinking of “what are all these things about.”

He can read fine. A common problem for kids with nonverbal learning disorders is that they remember all of the details of what they read but they have trouble finding a main idea. He could never just find the “important” details in a paragraph — they are all important to him! I found a workbook by Remedia Publishers for main idea. Nonverbal kids learn in a linear-sequential manner, so if this (or another workbook) teaches in this way it might help him.

Thanks,
Suzanne

Have you considered Visualizing and Verbalizing (Lindamood Bell)?

First, chuck the multiple-choice. Multiple-choice is *designed* to be confusing — if you could spot the answer easily right away, what would be the point?

For a while, forget worksheets (forever wouldn’t be too long for most worksheets, although you may return to good well-designed ones as they are useful.)

Get a good book that he *wants* to read. Two present Grade 6 students of mine are doing Harry Potter and the Lloyd Alexander series.

Start orally. Read aloud, alternating pages (I read the left side, and you do the right.). After you finish a section — a paragraph may be enough of a challenge for a start, then a page, then a chapter — ask him what he has just read/heard. When he gives a one-word answer, ask him to go on and tell more. The next day, also ask him what he had read about previously. If he is completely off the wall with his answers, you need to drop to a lower reading level and work on memory skills. But most kids will come up with something fairly reasonable.

After he is fairly good at orally telling what he is reading about, then try summarizing — tell him you want him to re-write the story, as if he is telling it to a friend. The outline of how to summarize given by another poster here may be overkill, although you can use it a few times if needed.

Have him do some essay-type questions on each chapter — not the deadly dry questions of the workbook lovers, but things that actually take some creativity:

Describe Harry’s uncle, Mr. Dursley.

What unusual things happened on the day described in Chapter 1?

Tell what happened when Harry went to the zoo.

Discuss these answers, working on structure, grammar, spelling, and completeness.

If you’re not doing standardized tests, you can leave it at that. He’s reading, he’s understanding, and he’s writing sensibly. What more do you need?

If you are getting ready for a standardized test, and it’s a good thing for kids to know how to handle them when they need to, *after* getting concepts through real reading and writing and discussion, go back to your workbook. Tell him to cover up the choices of answers and think out the answer in his own words. *After* he tells you his own answer, have him uncover the given responses and pick the one that fits best. With a little practice, he should be able to zip through the questions.