Use this lesson to help your ELs identify the main idea and supporting evidence in a short fictional text. It can be a stand-alone lesson or used as support for the lesson Reading Closely.
This lesson can be used as a pre-lesson for the Reading Closely lesson plan.
Objectives
Academic
Students will be able to identify the main idea and one piece of supporting evidence in a fictional text.
Language
Students will be able to identify the main idea in a story by focusing on the subject and using interactive supports.
Introduction
(2 minutes)
Write a student-friendly learning objective on the board and read it aloud. An example objective is, "I can find the main idea and supporting evidence in a story."
Under the objective, write a sentence stem that reads: "I think we will learn about..."
Tell students to turn to a seat partner. Explain that one partner will be A and the other will be B. (Note: Help students form partnerships, if needed, and hand out sticky notes to assign A and B partners.)
Instruct partner A to read the objective aloud to partner B. Then tell partner B to explain the objective in their own words using the sentence stem for support. (Note: Write the letter A next to the objective and the letter B next to the sentence stem on the board to support students in understanding their roles.)
Explain that today they will read some short stories as they practice finding the main idea and supporting evidence in each story.