Reading Resources:
The Main Idea
and how to find it!
Question Guide for Reading Discussions.pdfDissecting a Text
The first stage of finding the main idea is to make sure you've captured all the big ideas the text is trying to put in your brain. Often, we get stuck on just the facts of what happened, and miss what the author is trying to make us learn. There are lessons, connections, and new concepts in everything we read. It's easy to get lost in the 100s of words that are on a page, so we have some tools to use to help us stay on track and go just one step at a time. Use the guide to your left to walk you through questions to ask yourself, tasks that good readers use to help themselves, and tools you can use (like notes!) to do your best.
SeventhGrade-1[1].pdf
We Read It ! Now what?
After doing a close reading of a text, refer to your notes to help you with the next part.
Finding Concept Words
Your first task in building the main idea is to target your own thinking and keep your thoughts connected to the words in the text. Find a "concept word" that is true for the WHOLE text.
Example: If I use a word like "youth" for "Seventh Grade" by Gary Soto, I can connect my concept word with several parts of the story. There are many words and pieces of evidence from the beginning, middle and end that support my concept word "youth."
If your word only fits one part of the story, set it aside and try to find a simpler word that relates to it and that fits for the whole text.
Since one word isn't enough to make a whole main idea statement, I start to add 2 or 3 other concept words to it, all centered around my big idea.
Example: Since I have "youth" I can add other words that come to mind when I think of how youth is a theme in this story. I will add words like "awkward," "acceptance," "dream."
Now, put your words together into ONE sentence. Once you have a sentence that makes sense, see if you can add more (go to the conjunctions/syntax page for more info. on building a good sentence).
Example:
"This author is teaching us how youth is an awkward time when kids dream big and want acceptance."
Additional Resources for Literature
The two sites in this section offer you a wide variety of authors and stories to access to help support your progress in reading comprehension and discussions about texts.
What So Proudly We Hail - this site has american authors and includes several short stories, poems and longer literary works
American Literature - I have linked you to the middle school level short stories, but their website has several short stories and famous american authors with free resources
History Resources and Readings
This site has links to multiple themes and events througout the course of American History (8th Grade) as well as 6th and 7th grade themes for ancient civilizations and the middle ages. Each article can be read through using the Thought Guide attached at the top of my site. For history, a simple timeline can prove to be a useful graphic organizer/visual support. For some articles, a dual-perspective timeline may be more appropriate especially when we are studying times of conflict.