When looking at the reading standards and considering the organization of your year-long reading curriculum, it is tempting to want to start the year off by teaching 'main idea.' It seems logical--teach students how to determine the main idea, the big picture, of the text first in order to lay a strong foundation for deeper thinking later in the year.
The problem with teaching 'main idea' in this way is that if students do not have much background knowledge on the subject they are reading about, they will struggle to determine which ideas in the text are most important. To these students, every idea is new and therefore possibly very important.
So how can we scaffold this to support every student in determining the main idea of a text? Introducing the TEXT STRUCTURE STRATEGY.
How to Teach Main Idea with the Text Structure Strategy
Authors organize their ideas when they write. As elementary teachers, the five text structures to explicitly teach are: comparison, cause and effect, problem and solution, sequence*, and description.
When students are able to identify the structure of a text, they then understand how to organize their thinking about the ideas in the text. Using text structures as schemas to organize ideas from the text supports students ability to distinguish between key details and less important details.
Implementing the Text Structure Strategy
1) Explicitly teach the signal words and features of each text structure
2) Explicitly teach how to create graphic organizers to organize the information from the text
3) Explicitly teach how these organizers support our recall of the author’s most important ideas
4) Explicitly teach how to use the notes captured in the organizer to write a main idea statement about the text.
Getting the Most from Text Structure Instruction
Explicit Instruction
Did you notice my excessive use of the phrase ‘explicitly teach’? Another researched tidbit—reading is not intuitive and most students (especially those who have not had as many literacy experiences outside of the classroom) need explicit reading instruction in order to become proficient readers. Explicit instruction means the teacher models this strategy, step by step, and then gradually releases the work to the students until they are able to successfully apply it independently.
Wide Variety of Structures and Lots of Reading
The more we encounter certain text structures, the more familiar we become with their way of organizing ideas. Our brains get in the habit of looking for patterns in the text—they come to expect certain information being shared in certain ways. This is why proficient, well-read readers can make accurate predictions when reading—they recognize the patterns of events or information.
So, to make this strategy a habit that supports students’ life-long comprehension: read, read, read! Pull a variety of texts with a variety of structures into your years’ instruction and guide students towards recognizing these patterns in the text. The more they read, and the more these patterns are pointed out, the more likely it is that students will be able to recognize the patterns themselves and use the patterns to organize the text’s big ideas.
Example Lesson with a Historical Text
TEACHING POINTS USING A WHAT, WHY, HOW MINI-LESSON MODEL:
(What) When authors write a text, they organize their writing. There are different structures that they use to organize their ideas based on the subject or ideas they want to share. When we read a new text, we want to identify the text structure that the author used.
(Why) This helps us see which details are important, which can then help us determine what the author’s main idea is.
(How) We can look for key words or features that relate to certain text structures. We can also see if a text answers specific questions.
Today we are looking at a historical text. Often times, historical texts are written using a chronological text structure (or sequence structure).
Chronological texts describe events in the order in which they occur. They are told in a time order sequence.
Here are some signal words and phrases that help us figure out if the structure is chronological: before, previously, first, next, then, after, later, last, finally, now; actual dates/times
Here are some questions that the text will answer if it is written using a chronological text structure: What major events or incidents happened? When did something happen? In what order? What are the important events that led to ____?
Preview the text with the students. Model pointing out features of the text (headings, captions, pictures, bold words), as well as signal words for text structures.
This is example is referencing a historical text. Many historical texts have old black and white photographs, drawings or paintings of people in old style clothing, historic buildings or old technology. They typically have dates and times throughout the text, as well.
After previewing the text, discuss the structure of the text with students and set a purpose for reading.**
As we read, highlight the important dates and events that occur throughout the text.
OR
As we read, number the events that happen in the order in which they occur.
After modeling reading and annotating, display a chronological graphic organizer and model filling it out with the key details from the annotated text. The use of the organizer helps students distinguish important details from less important ones, guiding them towards an understanding of the main idea.
Students can then use the organizer to write a concise and precise main idea statement.
*It is worth teaching synonyms for these structures: i.e., sequence, chronological order, chronology, process sequence, time order sequence.
**It is worth noting that some texts may have multiple structures (many historical texts are written in chronological order, while also having a cause-and-effect structure-->how one event or series of events caused another). You can set a purpose based on the structure that will best support students' comprehension.
(I.e., Today, as we read, we will mark up the text looking for a cause and its effect. We will write a C next to the cause and an E next to the effect.)