Stories are a fantastic way to teach kids important life lessons. This reading comprehension worksheet uses the classic Aesop’s fable—The Fox and the Crow—to get your students thinking about the central lesson of a story.
A central component of reading comprehension is the ability to understand the main idea or theme of a text. In this series, your child will practice basic analysis of a short story or poem.
Take reading a piece and a clue at a time to help your child improve his reading skills. Ask and answer questions like who, what, where, when and why, about details, key info and using text evidence.
Want to help your young readers learn to discern the central message or lesson of fictional stories? Have your students read this short version of the classic fable of the "Lion and the Mouse" by Aesop to practice determining the moral.
When it comes to reading, it’s all about inferring. Kids can learn how to use clues in a text to understand a character’s thoughts or follow the action, in this book about jumping to conclusions.
This final installment of our Fifth Grade Fall Review Packet offers five more days of fun and diverse learning activities to prepare children to enter fifth grade with confidence.
Children will read this Reader's Theater script, then answer questions designed to support their understanding of the characters, story, and message of the play.
This workbook takes a snapshot of select heroes from Norse and Irish-Celtic stories: Thor and Cu Chullain. Their exciting deeds give kids noteworthy reading, writing and critical thinking practice.
This workbook is the spot for reluctant readers and bookworms alike! Kids can get ideas for books then delve deeper into what they read with decision charts, organizers, writing and design prompts.
Short stories, such as The Crow and the Jug, make great reading comprehension tools. Use this short Aesop’s fable to get your second graders thinking about central lessons and morals.
Fairy tales are a great way to engage your students in reading! Help them determine the central message of the classic story, The Tortoise and the Hare, with this fun reading comprehension worksheet.
This short fictional text can be used to help students determine words and phrases the author uses to help the reader figure out the central message of the story.
The ability to understand the key message in a passage is a critical reading comprehension skill. These resources give your child short text blocks to read and ask comprehensive questions to get your young one on the path to discovering themes, lessons, and messages themselves. For more practice, see our identifying main topics in non-fiction texts resources.
Once your students are able to read well and can understand the structure of a story you can teach them about the moral, or central message, of the story. Often presented in an analogous way, the central message of the fictional piece is a lesson that the author presents to the reader without putting it forward bluntly, forcing the reader to look beyond the text on the page, as it is in
informational writing.
Teaching children to understand this can be difficult as it is an abstract concept. You can start by reinforcing the commonalities of physical objects, causing the children to see a uniting theme between different items. This can be applied when recalling the story as they search for the theme or message of the piece.
Some common themes and ways to identify them are:
Acceptance - Characters respect and accept others who are different
Courage - Characters overcome fear
Compassion - Characters try to placate those who are suffering
Honesty - Characters discover that telling the truth is best
Kindness - Characters are generous and considerate of others
Reading stories with the children, followed by a question and answer period is the best way to reinforce this concept. Above, Education.com has provided many stories with themes and morals, along with questions that may help steer the students towards finding and understanding the moral of the stories so they can start to identify them on their own.
Teaching students to identify hidden meanings and reading between the lines helps them understand more complex story structures later in their education.