Helping students to understand the main idea.

I have put together a useful planning tool that will help your students develop a better understanding of identifying the main idea from a piece of text.

This can be found in graphic organisers and thinking tools section and it works particularly well with newspaper articles and research based texts.

Students read through a piece of text and then identify the who? what? when? where?  How? And why?

The section at the bottom of the sheet has 25 spaces for students to summarise the text in their own words.

This tool can be used both high-school and elementary students and will greatly assist them in improving their research and fact finding skills.

Dowload the Understanding the main idea tool here.

The Webs Best Collection of Thinking Tools

Hel lo, World!

 Last month we began offering the webs best collection of free classroom posters to Print and download and beautify your classroom.

This month we are offering an excellent collection of Thinking tools specifically aimed at teachers and students to help them improve their logical ordering of ideas and enhance creativity. 

Today we are proud to publicize these thinking tools and will be adding a new thinking tool every day.

We have begun the collection with over fifteen different thinking tools you can download immediately and like our classroom posters have, these will grow dramatically over the next few weeks.

All of these tools have been produced as high resolution images and will print in great quality at nearly any size.

So enjoy our Thinking Tools and feel free to let us know if there is any specific thinking tool or strategy you would like to see added to the collection.

KWHL Chart - Thinking Tool

Hello, World!

A KWHL can be used to track students learning of a particular topic or concept over time;

• The K stands for ‘What I already know’ (used to gain prior knowledge)

• The W stands for ‘What I want to learn’

• The H stands for ‘How I will find this information’ and;

• The L stands for ‘What I have learnt’. This is a particularly effective tool to use during an Integrated Topic.

It can also be a great portfolio piece to demonstrate the learning process of the student.

Download KWHL Chart