Comprehension Strategy Mini Lesson

Chapter 7 : Microselection

Introducing the concepts of key words and main ideas

Purpose/Goal:

Students will be able to find the main idea in individual sentences. By beginning with individual sentences, students find success and gradually transfer this ability to longer text.

The ability to locate the main idea in sentences and passages is a critical skill for several reasons.

· Students are better able to retain the meaning of the reading when they can locate and recall main ideas rather than trying to remember each detail because they haven’t been able to prioritize the information read.

· Once they can identify the main idea, they are more likely to be able to paraphrase the meaning of the sentence rather than having to memorize it as written.

Process/Instruction:

Introducing the concept of microselection

- Teacher explains that understanding the meanings of important words in a sentence will help in understanding the meaning of the whole sentence

Modeling the identification of key words

- Teacher reads a sentence from a reading selection required for the students.

o Example; Teacher may read, “The role of women in industry changed dramatically due to their widespread employment in traditional male jobs during WWII.”

- Teacher models selection of important words by writing the words women, industry, and WWII on the board.

- Teacher demonstrates that when we remember these important words, we can restate the idea using our own words

o Example; Teacher may state, “During World War II, women proved they could work in any job in industry by performing tasks usually done by men.

Guiding students in practicing microselection

- Teacher asks students to read a sentence and identify the most important words to remember.

- Teacher asks students to tell the sentence in their own words.

- This exercise is repeated several times.

Pairing students for further practice

- Students are paired up and asked to read a passage one sentence at a time.

- One student identifies the important words and the other student restates the sentence using their own words.

- Once the important words are identified, they can be written on a list.

Discussing the procedure

- Teacher brings class back together for a debriefing activity.

- Each pair is asked to share the important words they found for each sentence and discuss the word meanings.

- Any controversy over word meanings are discussed and students are encouraged to defend their choices.

Extensions:

Can be very beneficial in math story problems and other areas of the curriculum.