Subject: ELA (English Language Arts)
Lesson Length: 45 mins - 1 hour
Topic: Main Idea and Details
Brief Description: Students will demonstrate their understanding of the main idea and details of a story by creating a comic.
Know Before You Start: This lesson is a good way to check for understanding and can be used as a formative assessment.
Hook:
- Ask students what Cinderella is “mainly about,” the main idea e.g., Cinderella wants to go to the ball but her stepmother won’t let her.
- Show the Cinderella comic. Discuss the details students notice in each panel.
- What details help the reader understand the story?
- Are there any important details that are missing from the comic?
- Discuss how details support the main idea of a story.
Activity: Assign a story for the class to read. As students read, have them focus on the specific details shared throughout the text.
Have students create a three-panel comic showing the beginning, middle, and end of the story that includes specific details to support the main idea of the text.
Closure: Provide an opportunity for students to share their comics with another student and discuss the main idea and details.
Differentiation:
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Provide sentence starters.
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Allow students to work with peer model.
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Print out the panels and allow students to sketch out their ideas before creating comic.
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Gather familiar stories and allow students to preview stories before beginning their comic.
Resources:
- Comic to print or display: Comic.
- Storyboard Graphic Organizer.
- Text for Students to Read.
Suggested Content Packs:
Cinderella Around the World
The Birchbark House
M.C. Higgins, the Great
Tuck Everlasting
Holes
Stone Fox
Suggested Story Starters:
