Main Idea and Supporting Details

Goals for the Day To know what main idea is To know what supporting details are To know how to identify main ideas and supporting details for a passage

It’s your turn… Step 1: Your picture is part of a group. Find pictures that are related/similar to your own. All picture must be apart of the same topic. Step 2: Decide/Discuss: What topic are all of the pictures of a part of? Step 3: Be prepared to share your findings with the class.

What is a Main Idea? What are Supporting Details? What is a Topic Sentence?

What is the Main Idea? The main idea is what the passage is mostly about.

What are Supporting Details? They are the sentences that explain, or support, the main idea.

Why are main ideas and supporting details important? Good paragraphs have main ideas and supporting details. They help readers understand what an author is saying. They help writers organize their writing so that their message is clear.

Look at the list of words What do you think is the best topic for these words?

Coconuts Sand Palm trees Coast Ocean Answer: Beach

Carrots Potato Corn Green Beans Peas Answer: Vegetables

Star Moon Planets Sun Rockets Answer: Space

Needle Knife Bee’s Stinger Ax Nail Answer: Sharp things

Crayons Pencils Markers Glue Paper Answer: School Supplies

Banana Lemon Corn Sun School Bus Answer: Yellow Things

Not many people live on mountains, but mountains are important to all of us. Mountains create rain forests and deserts. Mountains store water on their snowy peaks and release it in rivers that make the valleys below green and fertile. Many farms and cities depend on mountain lakes for their drinking water, and the rivers are often harnessed to manufacture electricity. Mountains offer a chance for people to climb or ski or just take pleasure from some of the most spectacular scenery in the world. -Taken from Mountains by Seymour Simon

MAIN IDEA SUPPORTING DETAILS

Scientists call the splitting of icebergs “calving.” Icebergs are a lot larger than a calf, though. Icebergs as large as a ten-story building are not unusual. One of the largest Antarctic icebergs that formed recently is 185 miles long and 25 miles wide. -Icebergs Floating Snow Cones

MAIN IDEA SUPPORTING DETAILS

Sticks and Stones Instead of coloring that helps them blend into the environment, some animals have disguises that make them look like other living or nonliving things. Some katydids (a kind of grasshopper) look almost identical to leaves. Insects known as phasmids look like sticks or leaves. The pebble plant, which grows in southern Africa, escapes the attention of ostriches and other animals that might like to eat it because it looks like stones scattered on the desert floor. Some species of spiders and moths escape enemies because they look like bird droppings. Some leaf beetles look like caterpillar droppings. -taken from Mimicry and Camouflage by Mary Hoff

MAIN IDEA SUPPORTING DETAILS