Many students struggle with finding the main idea in elementary school. Students tend to confuse the main idea as the summary of a story. When asked for the main idea students tend to retell what a story or article was about. Teaching main idea to children is not a difficult task. It must be modeled to the children to show them what it should look like. Modeling once is not enough. This can be done at home if you are helping your child with his or her homework or in the classroom if you are a teacher or teacher's assistant.

The first step would be to model or scaffold finding the main idea. We cannot expect a child to be able to find the main idea when it is not explained and shown to them. Pick a book or short article. Tell the child to listen carefully to the story. After the story has been read orally tell your child that you will be looking for the "who" or "what" the text was mainly about. Only chose one "who" or "what." Write this down on a sheet of paper as shown on this link .

The second step tell your child that you will be identifying the most important thing about the "who" or "what." Again, there will only be one important thing. Once you have the "who" or "what" and the most important thing about it, you have just found the main idea. Be sure to write this down on a sheet of paper.

The third step would be to pick another book or article. You don't want to overwhelm the child with too much text to process. The article or book can be something that is familiar. Have your child read the text. Afterwards, have your child write down the "who" or "what" on the sheet of paper and the most important thing. And presto; your child has identified the main idea.

Keep repeating this process as practice until your child is comfortable with finding the main idea. This is how our 4th grade team teaches the main idea to our students. Parents can also use this as practice at home.