Episode 278: A Simple Hack for Helping Students Find the Main Idea in Informational Text

On this episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA podcast we're diving into the topic of making informational texts your students' new favorite genre!

Navigating through the complexities of analyzing informational texts can often be a daunting task for our middle school students. In today's episode, we discuss the simple yet powerful trick we used time and time again to actually empower our students when tackling a new informational text.

This innovative tool was crafted to guide students through the intricate process of summarizing, analyzing, and reflecting on their reading. Tune in as we break down each component of analyzing informational text by using the visual of an inverted triangle. We start with the expansive top section where students craft a tag and summary of the text, then transition to the middle section, where students condense their summary using the SWBST method, and finally, we arrive at the pinnacle of the triangle, where students distill their analysis into a succinct main idea!

You'll also grab great classroom discussion starters and thought-provoking questions to encourage students' critical thinking through each stage of the process! (So be sure to grab a pen and paper to take quick notes!)

Whether you've taught informational texts for 1 year or 30 years, this episode will leave you with fresh tools and strategies to invigorate your classroom instruction!

Tune in for an episode full of actionable takeaways!

Link mentioned: https://www.ebteacher.com/infotext

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey teachers, just a little bit of a heads up before we dive into today's episode. It might come off as a little bit of a shock as you start to listen, because Megan Jessica and I got together to chat about teaching informational texts, but how this genre actually became one of our all time favorites to use in the classroom. Now I know that can be quite the opposite for most teachers and a lot of students, so I really hope this conversation will spark some much needed excitement and new ideas for you. All right, we can't wait for you to tune in. Let's go ahead and get started. Hi there, caitlin here.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Our mission at EB academics is simple Help middle school ELA teachers take back their time outside of the classroom by providing them with engaging lessons, planning frameworks and genuine support so that you can become the best version of yourself both inside and outside of the classroom. So if you think you might be ready to try something new, because you know you simply cannot continue the way that you have been that, I'd invite you to take a moment to check out the EB Teachers Club, the EB Writing Program or the EB Grammar Program by visiting the links in the description of the podcast. We hope to continue to support you within one of our programs in the future and, in the meantime, we look forward to serving you right here on the podcast each week. All right, teachers, welcome back to another episode of the Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast.

Speaker 1: 1:34

We are in the month of April, which is wild to me. I saw something the other day that someone was like January was 100 years long and then February lasted two days and it was just like time just keeps going by in such random ways. It seems long and then it seems short. It's wild, right.

Speaker 2: 1:50

It's so strange and I was just talking to my brother this morning about booking summer vacation dates and I'm just like where is my mind right now? Like it's so weird.

Speaker 1: 1:59

Yeah, camps for well, all the things.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Oh yeah, yes, and those books are really, oh my gosh, all coming down the pipeline for sure.

Speaker 1: 2:06

Ok, so let's dive into today's episode. We are talking about a simple hack for helping students find the main idea and informational tax, and I love this topic because I don't know if you guys follow us on Instagram, if you don't go, follow us at EBA academics, but we posted something the other day about informational tax and just basically hating teaching informational tax and it was so interesting because we got so many likes, so many shares, so many comments on that post and so it seems like this is like a common thread, that teaching informational tax is kind of a hassle and something that most of us don't really love to do. So I like this topic. I think it's going to be helpful. This is airing at the beginning of April and, if you guys don't know, we are doing a little pop up Facebook group situation for teaching informational tax. We're providing you with five free resources and showing you how you can utilize those with your students. So if you haven't joined us for that yet, I'm going to include the link in the show notes for you to go sign up for that. You can also go to ebacademicscom ebteachercom forward slash info text and you can sign up to join us there. That kicks off very soon. So, yeah, all the informational tax things right now, love it.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Ok, let's dive into today's episode. So you guys probably know this already, but for a lot of students, finding main ideas and informational tax is easier said than done. It's like what's the big deal? Just find the main idea. But it's not really that simple for a lot of our students, and when we have a tool that students can rely on to help them summarize, help them analyze and help them reflect on their reading, it's going to become much easier for them to be able to pinpoint a text's most critical ideas. And that's exactly what we are going to walk you through.

Speaker 1: 3:45

Today is a helpful tool so that you can start using it with your students ASAP, like you can begin using this tomorrow if you're listening to this on Tuesday on this episode airs, and what I love about this is because, just like with anything, quite frankly, with consistent and repeated use of this particular tool, students are going to become really good at identifying and writing main ideas.

Speaker 1: 4:07

So I want you to think of this tool that we're going to share with you as basically a compass that really helps students navigate the details of their reading, and this useful tool. I'm going to dive into it in just a second, but I want you to think of it as an inverted story triangle. So think of an inverted triangle in your brain, and it works best for informational texts that tell a real life story, so, for example, a biographical article or a text that explains a progression excuse me of key events. So Jessica's going to kind of walk us through how it's set up and then Megan and I will come in and fill in the other gaps for the rest of it. So, jessica, you want to start us off with how to use this tool, yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:47

So I want you to pretend you know you've got an informational text for your students to read and their task is to identify the main idea. So it can be helpful to work through a few steps before they get to that point of, okay, write down the main idea. And that goes back to that inverted triangle. So I want you to think of this triangle, with the widest section on top right, the narrow section on the bottom. Think of it as going from an email at the top to like a text message in the middle and then a tweet at the very bottom. So we're starting out with a lot more information and we're just making it more concise as we go down the triangle. So at the very top part of the triangle, that first big section, that's going to be where students write a tag and a summary of the text they just read. So this is like that email I just described. So this is going to have the most information out of the whole triangle. Picture it as like three to five sentences and it really gets students just their ideas flowing as they start to summarize the text. So this section is always going to start with a tag and EB teachers you know this. A tag is a title, author, genre, sentence. Doesn't have to be in that order, though, and then the rest of that section is going to be a summary of the text, so I want to give you an example so you can picture what this is like. So this would be based off an informational text article and it would be a biographical article. Remember, those work really well with this strategy. So let's say this is what students write in that first part of the triangle.

Speaker 2: 6:15

Michelle Carter's biographical article Claudette Colvin a biography tells the important story of Claudette Colvin's role in the fight for civil rights. When she was 15, claudette bravely refused to give up her bus seat, inspiring others and sparking important events like the Montgomery bus boycott. Claudette's courage led to changes that helped end segregation, showing that even young people can make a big difference in the fight for justice. So that whole thing would go in the first part of the triangle, and I want you to notice that right away. The title, the author and the genre were immediately identified, like in the very first sentence, and then there was a short summary, right Two, maybe three sentences for the text, and what I like about this is students just know this is how I'm always going to start with my main idea.

Speaker 2: 7:05

I'm going to come up with a tag and I'm going to write a summary. And it's brilliant because it can be rinsed and repeated. You can have them do this over and over again with any text they read, whether it's literature or informational text, so that by the time you do this with maybe a more challenging informational text and you're working on the main idea, they're like oh yeah, I got this Tag and summary, no problem, and they're doing it confidently and that summary, that's hopefully a skill that you know. Let's be honest, students have been working on that since like first grade. I feel like even my kids now my little ones, are like oh yeah, I had to write a summary today.

Speaker 2: 7:40

That's all their assignments are summarizing. So by the time they're in fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, that should be something they're semi familiar with and we're going to give you some steps on. You know how to make it more concise when you're that age. So they're not. And then and then and then. But really, tag and summary, that should be a pretty basic first step for students. So then Megan will talk to you about how you can break that summary down.

Speaker 3: 8:01

Yeah. So now we're moving into that middle section of the inverted triangle and this is where students take that summary and put it into a concise statement using the SWBST method. And if you're not familiar, that just stands for somebody wanted, but so then. So this one to three sentence response analyzes the story the text tells by breaking it down to a person's motivations, a complication the person faces, and then the way this complication affects the events of the text. So in this step students are beginning to analyze, as they're not just actually summarizing the text, but they're starting to organize the most important information.

Speaker 3: 8:41

So if you're thinking back to that email and text analogy, this is where students writing goes from mirroring an email and length to being more like a text message in terms of length. So an example of an SWBST sentence for the informational text article Jessica was just discussing about Claudette Colvin might read Claudette Colvin wanted to sit on the bus but she was asked to give up her seat to a white passenger, so she refused and was arrested for defying an unfair law. Then Claudette's brave actions inspired others and contributed to ending, to the ending of bus segregation in Alabama. And then I think Caitlin is going to help us narrow down that summary a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Yes, and I love looking at it from taking it from like an email to a text message, because then this next part is going to narrow down even more and hopefully you can start to really see the inverted triangle like at play here. So once students have narrowed down their summary, they are ready for that final step in the story triangle and that's writing the main idea. Right, that's the goal, that's what we're trying to get them to, and so they're going to write this in the smallest point of the triangle and it basically is taking their writing from a text message now to a tweet and or like an X I don't know what it's called nowadays.

Speaker 2: 9:53

I would say that's so funny. When I put this in the notes I was like is it even called a tweet anymore? I don't know, I'm bluseless or a thread, if we're on Instagram threads.

Speaker 1: 10:01

I mean just the lingo. I can't keep up with all of it, but it's fine. You guys get the point. We're making it 140 characters, so this should really be like the most concise thing that they write in the whole triangle. So this one sentence response states a message that the author wants the reader to take away from the text. That's the main idea. So this message can be universal, meaning it applies to most readers and not just people in the text. Or you can have it be specific to the details of the text. Okay then, hopefully that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 10:32

So for the article that we've been discussing, the main idea might be something like Claudette Colvin's Brave Act of refusing to give up her bus seat had a significant impact in the fight for civil rights. Or you could take it even a step further and have students write an additional main idea that gives a general life message that people can take away from the article. So an example of a more generalized main idea that's related to this article might be something like the following Even young people can make a difference when they stand up for what they believe in. So you can notice that's more of like a universal message as opposed to something that's specific to the text.

Speaker 1: 11:07

So over the course of writing in the various sections of the story triangle, students went from summarizing to analyzing to reflecting, because they worked through three concrete steps. Now they are more likely to arrive at a much more relevant and thoughtful main idea, as opposed to if you didn't do this and you're just like tell me the main idea. They haven't gone through this whole thoughtful process beforehand. So ideally, if students work through these three steps in order a tag and summary and a SWBST sentence and a concise main idea they do it consistently. We want them to do it consistently. Just like with anything, consistency makes it better, specifically with the informational text that they read, and eventually they're just going to be so second nature at being able to quickly identify and communicate main ideas.

Speaker 2: 11:57

Yeah, and I think that's super important. This should be something we do with them every time they need to do the main idea. Have them make the triangle fill it out and, yes, at first it's going to take 10, 15 minutes and you're like, oh my gosh right, is this worth it? It is worth it Because if you do it three, four, five times, pretty soon they're going to be so quick at it. So hopefully you can picture what students are writing in each section of that inverted triangle as they work toward identifying the main idea.

Speaker 2: 12:22

But we actually want to go over some questions or some helpful hints you can give your students to get the most out of them for each section.

Speaker 2: 12:31

So it might be helpful to just listen to this part of the episode all the way through and then go back and listen to it again and jot down the questions that you can ask your students to get them to produce their best writing. So if you're back in the classroom now right, we're imagining we're there your students have just finished reading their informational text and they're working on the widest part of the triangle, that tag and summary part. Here's what you can ask your students. What are the most important details in this text. If I had a maximum of five sentences to retell the details of this text, which points would be most important to include? And then, finally, what are the most important details from this text that someone would need in order to understand it correctly? And it just gives them a new way of thinking about the text and lets them kind of brain dump all their ideas, because most of that won't end up in the main idea but it's going to influence what they write later on.

Speaker 3: 13:30

Right. So then, once students have successfully written a tag and summary we're moving back through that middle part of the triangle. Here they're ready for their SWBST sentence. You can ask students the following questions who is the text about? What do they want and this doesn't have to be a physical thing, of course what happens to complicate their path toward obtaining this desire? How does the person respond to this complication? And then, what happens as a result of the person's response? And then, finally, when students are ready to write their actual main idea, you can ask them these two guiding questions what does the author want me to learn from this text and what point is the writer trying to make with this text?

Speaker 1: 14:11

I love it and I love all of these questions too, because I feel like so often we overcomplicate things and it's like this is so simple and so straightforward and so easy. And if we utilize these questions, we utilize this inverted triangle for students and we do it consistently. We work through these steps consistently with our students, they're going to get more efficient at it. They're going to get more accurate at identifying and writing main ideas for informational texts and hopefully, informational texts won't be that Like the post that we posted on Instagram. Gosh, I wish I had it right in front of me. It was so funny. It was Steve Carell, I think, right In the classroom. That was the one. Oh, my gosh, it's hilarious. Just the feeling that so many teachers and that we have when we are teaching informational texts to our students. It's just brutal, but it's not, it doesn't have to be right. Yeah, jessica, you really liked the word. I said that.

Speaker 2: 15:01

I do like that because I feel like personally I love teaching informational texts oh my gosh. There's so much fun to be had with it. So when I hear that teachers are like oh, I'm like no, it doesn't have to be that way.

Speaker 1: 15:12

And I actually want to share. One of our teachers in our Facebook group posted this morning. I saw it. I'm not sure when she actually posted into the group, but she said one of her students who doesn't ever participate in class, she taught the Roanoke Colony informational text unit and for the first time he was like so excited, went and did his own research on it and all this stuff and he was super engaged and like, as a literature teacher, as an English teacher, you don't necessarily think that that's going to be the thing that elicits a response from that student who's not interested is informational texts, right, like there's so much richness in informational texts.

Speaker 1: 15:49

And I actually want to call out again our free workshop that we're doing next week. It's like a five-day. We're going to meet for 10 minutes every day. We're going to give you a free resource, but it's all focused on the Mary Celeste story. If you don't know anything about that. It's one of our favorite things to talk about at EB. It's this abandon ship and there are all these theories about it. That's an informational text that students can get excited about.

Speaker 2: 16:13

Jess, I mean yes, I do, I want to add on to that, because I think that's, like, honestly, the first step. You want to make informational texts interesting for your students. Pick an interesting topic. Yeah, there's so much out there. Google unsolved mysteries from history. You're going to find a whole bunch of topics. When you have an engaging text, then when you're asking them to do a skill that's not super exciting, like find the main idea, it's going to make it a lot more enjoyable for them. They're going to give better answers because they're invested in the text. Then you add on this second layer of using the inverted triangle. It's now. It's like I'm engaged in the text and I have a tool to help me create my answer, like when Right.

Speaker 1: 16:50

They're going to do a great job, 100 percent. It makes me wonder to these testing companies, like why can't they just put an interesting informational text on the test? Yes, I've done some of them with my students and watching them just to get an idea of what types of questions, and I'm like I don't, this is so boring. I'm like who cares about this topic?

Speaker 2: 17:08

I told you how I was working with Jameson on an ELA lesson a few weeks ago and the informational text was about pioneer life. If you were a 10-year-old girl and he was like I could care less. I was like buddy, we just got to get through it. But I'm like goodness, like how can I ask him questions and get him to discuss this? He is just like this has nothing to do with me, but there's opportunities there to make it more interesting, totally.

Speaker 3: 17:32

Yeah, well, I think if we remember to approach history as a story, because it's just a true story, then you can make it interesting. But, it's the way the approach happens. So I think these are all good points for sure.

Speaker 1: 17:46

That's so true. Sorry, I know we want to record and wrap up here at the end of this episode, but I had the best history teacher in college. I don't know if you had her, jessica. She stood at LMU. Yeah, she stood in front of the class. She had long brown, curly hair, almost black hair, and she literally just stood and told the history of the United States.

Speaker 1: 18:05

Oh, the story she never wrote any notes on the board, never had any PowerPoints, never had any activities, nothing else. All I did was take notes in my notebook the entire time. But she told it so interestingly that it was my favorite class I've ever taken. I've never worked so hard in the class and I still only got a B plus. I will forever remember that.

Speaker 3: 18:24

I definitely did not have her. I wish I did.

Speaker 1: 18:26

Oh, my God, it was great. Okay, so it's up to you whether you have students build these triangles out individually or in groups. You can utilize it However you want to do it in your class. You can even have it be a huge poster that different groups do with different informational texts and they share it with the class All kinds of opportunities to use this tool with your students. And really this is cool because you can use these triangles if you want to use them for fictional texts as well, and really all you're doing is changing the word main idea to theme, because a theme is the author's message to the reader, which is essentially what a main idea is in what we're talking about here. So hopefully that's helpful for you guys. Let us know, come over on Instagram, give us a follow and let us know if you utilize this activity with your students.

Speaker 1: 19:08

We are at EB academics, we read your messages and we respond to them, and we would love to hear from you. All right, you guys, we're going to see you next week on the podcast. We are talking about a research unit that your students will actually enjoy. It is that time of year that research units are upon us, so why not make them fun and exciting. This one's simple, it's short, that's coming up next week and it's going to be a quick lesson that you can then go take and utilize in your classroom. All right, you guys. Thanks so much for joining us and we'll see you next week on the podcast. Bye everyone.

Speaker 2: 19:37

Orivity.