Lesson Plan: Teaching Reading Strategies

Some students reading skills need a lot of remediation, which typically requires intensive tutoring. Other students simply need to improve their reading strategies, which will tremendously improve their reading abilities. One strategy to focus on, regardless of reading level, is teaching main ideas and details. Once students can recognize main ideas and details, reading becomes easy.

If students learn how to identify the main ideas of a passage, they will know what every paragraph is about. Usually, the main idea will be the first sentence or the last sentence of a paragraph. Sometimes, if a student is unsure of the main idea of a paragraph, he or she should refer to the title or the topic of the paragraph. These items give a hint to the main idea of the passage.

If students can identify the main idea of a passage, then they should have a good idea about the other sentences in the passage. When the student sees sentences that do not support the main idea of a passage, those sentences do not belong to the paragraph. Those sentences are not supporting details and detract from the main idea.

If students are able to identify the main idea of a passage, the effect is twofold. First, they know what the paragraph is about, and second, they are able to identify those sentences that work as supporting details--those details that add to the overall purpose of the paragraph. Those sentences that do not contribute to the overall effect of the paragraph are irrelevant and should be eliminated.

When students break a paragraph up sentence by sentence and analyze them, they become more aware of what they are reading. They begin to focus on information and are able to comprehend more details. It is not surprising, therefore, that students improve their reading abilities.