Whooo loves main idea??

For the past 2 weeks we have knee deep in non-fiction main idea. Not going to lie, in the past I haven't always been the biggest fan of teaching this concept because it has always been one the most difficult for them to understand. This year however, they rocked it!! Seriously! They are so good at finding facts and details and figuring out what they have in common.

It's a goal of ours to teach our kiddos "text evidence". Trying to teach them to go back and prove their answers is difficult especially when they are learning to read, but they have done so well. I was very proud of them.

Of course we started the 2 week endeavor with a little of "I do" then toward the end of the first week and start of the 2nd we moved to "we do". Then by the end of this week THEY were doing it! And doing so well!

We of course read the non-fiction stories together because my reading levels range from a rigby level 7 to 25. One of my favorite resources for non fiction is our Kids TIME magazines. They LOVE looking through them and all you hear is "Oooohhhh, awwwww, LOOK AT THIS!!! "

We started with an article called "Whoo's A Wonderful Bird". It was of course about Owls. They had to find 3 facts and then restate the main idea.

Another article we used was called "pond Life" about all of the things that live in ponds. Her are their little facts and ponds. :)

During the middle of all of this we had a few short lessons about questioning. How good readers ask questions. Again, using some TIME magazines, this time posters we asked questions then read to answer some questions and recorded facts and details along the way.

And lastly, in working with words we have been learning about contractions. Of course we did Cara Carroll's crocodile contractions! LOVE IT!!! And so did my kiddos!

The crocodile chomped on 2 words and turned them into contractions.  They recorded contractions on their little crocs.  {forgot to get a close up}

Happy Friday! Hope you all haw a wonderful weekend!