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Prioritizing Key Details

Tags

ELA: Reading ^21st Century Skills K-8 Strategy

Skills

Verbal Reasoning

Prioritizing Key Details

If your student has difficulty discerning the most important details in the reading

Teach It!

  1. Objective: Students will practice recognizing which details are most important to support the main themes of the story.
  2. Direct Instruction: a) Create an outline together with students of a shared text, pulling out the main idea, followed by listing the key details that support the main idea. b) Practice together several times and then have students try on their own. Allow students to have two or three main ideas with details if they feel it is appropriate. c) Help students prioritize details in order of importance. Offer prompts such as, Why is this detail more important? How does this detail support the main idea? Are there places where the details are overlapping or essentially the same? Can any be eliminated?

*print* Student Cheklist: Prioritizing Key Details

  1. Read the text.
  2. Write a list of 1-3 main ideas in the text.
  3. Under each main idea, write the supporting details.
  4. Questions to ask myself: Does this detail support the main idea? How important is it? Without this detail, would the story make sense? Are there overlapping details that are essentially the same and can be eliminated?

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

Some students love the details and consider them all important. Teaching students which details are essential to support a thesis and which are non-essential is an important skill.