Comprehension Strategy: Predicting
Reading Strategy: Determining Importance
Guided Practice Activities
1. What’s Your Story?
2. Famous Five-Key Word Search
3. Very Important Points (VIPs)
4. Main Idea Pyramid
1. What’s Your Story?
The What’s Your Story? framework distils the key elements of a narrative text in a simple
diagram. Completing this activity requires students to identify important information. It also
promotes awareness of how knowing the narrative text organisation aids comprehension. What’s
Your Story? also helps students to make connections between different parts of a narrative
? Provide time for students to read the selected text.
? Direct students to work in small groups to locate and record key information under each
category on the format sheet.
? Provide the opportunity for students to share and compare information recorded.
Adaptations:
What’sYour Story sheets can be adapted to suit a variety of other texts.
Once students have completed several What’s Your Story? sheets, these can be used to look for pattern and make comparisons across different texts.
2. Famous Five-Key Word Search
Involving students in Key Word Searches is an effective way of helping them to extract important
information from texts. The success of strategies such as summarising and paraphrasing depends
on students’ ability to select appropriate key words. The process of selecting key words will need
to be modelled many times starting with single sentences and moving into more complex and
lengthy examples. Once students have worked in this context the Famous Five framework can be
used independently.
? Provide time for students to read the selected passage and identify possible key words
during reading. These may be recorded on adhesive notes or directly on the text.
? At the conclusion of reading the text, direct the students re-read the possible key words and
select the famous five key words.
? Invite students to record their famous fives onto the format provided.
? Provide time for students to share their key words in small groups, discussing and
comparing their selections.
? Direct students to use the key words as a stimulus to create their own sentences about the text.
3. Very Important Points (VIPs)
VIPs (Hoyt 2002) is a simple activity that encourages students to identify important information in
a text. Students create a fringe of adhesive note strips that are used to mark identified sections of a
text that contain very important points. The use of the adhesive note strips allows students some
flexibility in their final choice of the allocated number of VIPs.
? Allocate the number of strips to be made from the adhesive note provided. Limiting the
number of strips to be used helps students to focus
? Provide time for student s to create their fringe of strips.
? Provide time for students to read the text and place their strips on what they consider to be
VIPs. These should be places in the text that are of significance to the overall meaning of
the text.
? Provide time for students to share and compare their VIPs, substantiating their selections.
5. Main Idea Pyramid
The Main Idea Pyramid is a graphic organiser that helps students to determine important
information within a paragraph or entire text. The completion of a pyramid helps to show the
relationship between supporting detail and the main idea. Texts that have paragraphs with clear
topic sentences and simple listing structures are ideal texts when beginning to use Main Idea
Pyramids.
? After reading a text or sections of a text have students brainstorm important facts.
Encourage students to refer back to the text if necessary.
? Have students record facts on cards or notes so they can be moved.
? When the brainstorming process is complete, direct students to cluster the cards or notes
into common sub topics. Transfer clustered information to the base of the pyramid.
? Direct students to re-read the combination of words/ phrases in each cluster and record a
main idea statement for each. These statements form the second level of the pyramid.
? Direct students to then use all the information at the second level to create a main idea of
the text. This forms the top level of the pyramid.
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