What are supporting details?

What can you find in the passage to help support or determine the main idea?

"Benjamin Franklin loved to write. When he was twenty-two, he set up his own printing shop and started a newspaper. He also printed a book called "Poor Richard's Almanac". It had funny stories, information about the weather, and wise sayings."

What is the main idea?

The ice cream cone was invented in 1904. It all started at the St. Louis World's fair when an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes for his ice cream. A man named Ernest Hamwi was selling waffles in the booth next to him. He helped his neighbor out by making cone-shaped waffles to hold the ice cream. The rest is history.

What is the main idea?

Sam wanted to be a doctor. He liked watching shows about hospitals. He also liked to talk to his doctor when he went in for checkups. Sam had a goal to learn everything he could about becoming a doctor.

Choose the correct text structure: "Her mother gave Margaret her first camera in 1921, when she was 17 years old. In 1929, Henry Luce invited Margaret to work at Fortune Magazine. She jumped at the chance and became the first woman in a new field called photojournalism. In 1930, she was the first photographer from a Western country to be allowed into the Soviet Union (now Russia). When World War II broke out in 1939, Margaret became the first female war correspondent. This is a journalist who covers stories first hand from a war zone. In 1941, she traveled to the Soviet Union again and was the only foreign photographer in Moscow when German forces invaded."

What’s the text structure?

Why was the Great Chicago Fire so disastrous? After all, Chicago had fire departments and fire alarms. One reason for the terrible fire is that the alarm malfunctioned. The local fire company noticed the fire by accident as it was returning from another fire. As another problem, a watchman who saw the flames directed other fire companies to a location that was nearly a mile away from the fire. Because of these two problems, a fire that could have been controlled rapidly spread across the city.

What’s the text structure?

After the fire, thousands of people were left homeless. Many escaped the fire with nothing except the clothes on their backs. Providing all of these people with food, clean water, and shelter was a huge task. Luckily, the city quickly formed a Relief and Aid Society. This group started giving out the food donations that were pouring in from other cities. The society built places for people to live, gathered the tools that people needed to rebuild their houses, and even vaccinated 64,000 people against smallpox.