Grasping Main Ideas

Grasping Main Ideas

5 Second Memory Game

Look at the picture for just 5 seconds. How many images can you remember?

Open Ended

How many did you remember?

5 Second Memory Game

This time, try to CATEGORIZE the items in your mind like kitchen things, office things, red things blue things..

Try again and see how many you can remember in 5 seconds!

Open Ended

How many did you remember this time?

Pop-Out Sentences

Today I want to point out that sometimes texts don't have subtitles. When trying to find the main categories in a text, you rely on pop-out sentences.

Find the Pop-Out Sentence

Read the paragraph. What sentence do you think is the pop-out sentence--the sentence that tells what this whole chunk is about?

Multiple Choice

Which was the pop-out sentence?

• The octopus has a body unlike any other animal.

• It's body, called the mantle, is soft and shaped like a bag.

• The octopus's arms are covered with suckers.

• The suckers help the octopus grab and taste things.

• The octopus can see very far distances, but it cannot hear anything at all.

The first sentence was the pop-out!

This first sentence even sort of works like a subtitle, doesn't it? The first sentence of this paragraph introduces the category--the octopus body!

Read this paragraph and find the pop-out sentence.

Multiple Choice

Which sentence was the pop-out sentence?

• The octopus's body is amazing on the inside, too.

• Along with its stomach and other organs, the octopus has three hearts.

• Two of its hearts send blood, which is light blue, to its organs for breathing, called gills, on two of its arms.

• The third heart sends blood to the rest of its body.

• When the octopus breathes out, the water comes out of a tube called the siphon.

The first sentence was the pop-out sentence!

Do you see how that first sentence told what the whole section was going to be about--the inside of the body?