Find Main Ideas and Summarize

Determine two or more main ideas, connect them to key details, and summarize an informational text.

How the lesson starts: Find Main Ideas and Summarize

Chef Amara's soup
Chef Amara the hedgehog runs a soup shop with an odd menu. She cooks articles! Her first step is finding the big flavor of a paragraph: its main idea.
The umbrella test
A main idea is what a whole paragraph is mostly about. Try the umbrella test. Trees help a city. Shade cools sidewalks. Roots soak up rain. Birds nest in branches. Every detail fits under the first sentence. That's the umbrella!
Let's taste a paragraph
Penguins are built for icy water. Thick feathers trap warm air. A layer of fat keeps heat in. Flippers work like paddles. Is feathers trap warm air the main idea? No, it's one detail. Built for icy water covers them all!