Main Idea Lesson and Activities Nonfiction Reading Strategies Comprehension Crew

Let’s make main idea fun and exciting! Try the Comprehension Crew for teaching main idea and practicing with engaging activities. Your students will be begging to learn more reading strategies!

This resource includes everything you need to introduce and teach finding the main idea to your students. It also provides a consistent framework for continuous reinforcement and application of the skill with any text and with all future lessons.

Matteo The Main Idea Finder will help you teach identifying the main idea to your students in a way they will truly understand and internalize. Matteo helps readers pick out the topic then weeds out the extra details to find the main idea of the text.

This resource introduces concrete ways for students to interact with the reading skill through this character representation. This lesson format can be applied to any book over and over again! There are a variety of activities included in this resource for your students to practice finding the main idea. Google slides version available.

*download the preview to learn more about the Comprehension Crew program

The resource includes the following:

• Character Posters & Visual Aids
• Character Profile– includes character profession, prop, gesture, phrase, likes, and how they help reader
• Concrete Main Idea Activity
• Introduction & Modeling Main Idea Lesson Plan– can be applied to any book
• Teacher Implementation Tips
• Graphic Organizers– 25 differentiated options for any text
• Flip Books– 2 options that can be used with any text
• Interactive Notebook
• Task Cards with Photographs– includes answer key and differentiated answer sheets
• Task Cards with Short Text– includes answer key and differentiated answer sheets
• Practice Main Idea Passages– differentiated texts and scaffolded response options with answer keys included
• Mentor Text Suggestions – includes a wide variety of picture books and wordless picture books

What is the Comprehension Crew?

Comprehension Crew is a group of characters each representing an essential reading skill. Each character has a profession, gesture, and prop that provide a concrete representation of the reading skill. These characters are used to model and reinforce each skill both in life and in text. The character helps students to understand, remember, and intentionally apply skills as they are reading.

Who are the other Comprehension Crew characters?

Non-fiction reading skills:

• determining importance
• main idea
• text features
• text structure
• vocabulary

Fiction reading skills:

• inferencing
• questioning
• predicting
• summarizing
• clarifying
• connecting– TRY FOR FREE!
• synthesizing
• evaluating
• visualizing
• theme

Teacher Reviews

2nd grade teacher Barbarba said, “This resource is a great way to help my students practice identifying the main idea. I can easily differentiate with my students.”

2nd grade teacher Wendy said, “This resource was very engaging. My students loved it. After we finish the unit, all students felt successful. This is not the only resources i have bought from you. I love all your units. I love it went from easy to abstract.”