The Great Kapok Tree

This is a story that easily lends itself to teaching students about main idea, supporting ideas, and summarizing. I have the book as a big book, so it's easy to share with whole classes. By 3rd grade, this is a book that students may have already read, but that's fine. It is easy for students to identify the main idea. They look at me as if saying, "DUH...the kapok tree."

I, then, tell them that as I read the story we are going to pay attention to how the writer supports this main idea, by finding the main idea of each page. We create a 3-colummn chart labeled:
Who/What? ---Did What? ---Why? As I read, I stop and students help in filling out the chart:
two men /pointed to tree / want to chop the tree

Often, students have to be guided to look for clues in the pictures because the pictures help to tell the story as well, so if the author is not explicitly telling us something the pictures may. We continue this process together for a while and the last few pages they have to do it independently, and then we check answers together.

When we finish, we read the entries and show students how these entries help us to summarize the story. As a group we write a summary.

This lesson is adapted from Teacher Vision.