 Objective:
The lessons in this section involve reading to learn
and understand new information and to perform tasks. You
will be working with skills to help you become an effective
reader of informational and task-oriented texts. Everyday
you encounter the need to understand information from printed
material. That might include reference materials like encyclopedias,
atlases, dictionaries, pamphlets, non-fiction books, newspaper
and magazine articles, letters to the editor, schedules, maps,
timelines, recipes, instructions, newspaper want ads, consumer
reports, travel books, first aid or driver's manuals, catalogs,
yellow pages, movie schedules, or concert seating maps.
By the time this lesson is finished, you'll have some tools
to help you identify and understand main ideas in informational
texts, and the details supporting those ideas. In this
lesson you will:
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Learn and practice skills to identify
and understand main ideas in informational texts,
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Identify supporting details from
informational texts,
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Evaluate
and score your answers.
The following phrases will be used in this lesson. They might
be quite familiar to you, or you might want some review. For
review, just click the Tools tab on the top navigation
bar and open Vocabulary.
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Main or Important Idea
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Supporting Detail
These words share a similar meaning. You may already
know them. Be aware that they may be used to indicate the
concept of an important idea.
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main idea
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major idea
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central idea
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most important idea
You might make a connection between these concepts and the
definition of theme or message when reading narrative passages.
The important or main ideas are the skeleton holding a
piece of informational text together. Main ideas work
in the same way the theme of a narrative passage works to
tie the plot, characters and events together.
Clues to help you identify main or important
ideas:
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Think of one sentence that describes
what the passage was about.
- Remember, there can be more than one major or important
idea in an informational text, depending on the length
of the reading, but all will be connected and usually build
upon each other.
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Think of the article in an outline
form. The major ideas would be the main headings;
the supportive details would be the sub-headings. A web
or map of the ideas also works.
A major or important idea is more than
a word; it should be stated in a complete sentence.
- Major ideas are always supported by details to
prove or explain the idea.
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And finally, do you remember the definition
of a supporting detail? Let's review:
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A supporting detail is a fact, a statement,
a quote, or an event, that holds up a major idea.
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Supporting details prove
the major or important idea.
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Think of the important idea as the
top floor of the Space Needle. The supporting details
are all the metal pieces holding it up.
- Or if the major idea is compared to a soccer uniform,
or new clothes from the mall, the supporting details would
be the individual parts of the uniform or clothing: shorts,
shoes, jersey, or jeans, sweatshirt, belt.
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If the major idea is a completed puzzle
in which you can see the whole picture, the supporting
details are the individual pieces. When they are all
put together, the picture is complete.
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In the next section, you'll see some examples
of how the Tips and Tools just reviewed work to help find
important or major idea and the supportive details in an informational
passage.
Example
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