Reading Comprehension Strategy Series: How To Teach Determining Importance in the Upper Elementary Classroom
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oung readers often think that everything they read is equally important, but they can't read effectively if they try to hold on to every detail.
To truly understand a text, students need to learn how to distinguish between essential information and minor details.
Determining Importance is a reading comprehension strategy that will support OTHER reading comprehension strategies.
For instance, when summarizing a text, students must identify the key points first. They need to understand what the text is mainly about before they can create a concise summary.
Similarly, to make inferences, students must be able to pick out the crucial information that supports their conclusions.
Recognizing the important parts of a text allows them to make connections and draw deeper insights, enhancing their overall comprehension and critical thinking skills.
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what you need to know before teaching the Determining Importance reading strategy:
In short, determining importance means that the reader focuses on what’s most important in the text so that he/she can develop deeper meaning and overall understanding of the text. Proficient readers are able to decide, from everything on the page, what is most important to remember.
Additional details provided by the author make the text more interesting, but being able to extract the most important details will lead to true comprehension and retention of new information.
Determining importance also means that readers have to monitor their thinking as they read in order to notice when something important has been shared within a text. In a sense, readers “file” these important details away in their mind and pull them out later in order to see how they all fit together as main ideas and themes. When readers can sort out the big ideas from the text, they are able to filter and organize all other information gained from the text around those ideas.
Determining Importance in Fiction
To determine importance in fictional text, students need to hone in on:
important things a character says and does, and how those words and actions effect the events of the story
notice how settings can play an important role in the story
determine which events and characters make the biggest impact on the story as a whole.
pay attention to a character’s development overtime and how that development impacts the outcome of the story
pay attention to character relationships as well as problems and solutions
use importance details from the text to determine major themes from the story
Determining Importance in NONFiction
In nonfiction texts, students determine:
details from the text that indicate the structure of a text
the main facts, details, and vocabulary about a topic by noticing text features such as headings illustrations, graphs, bold words, photographs, and others - these text features are often included to draw the reader’s attention to the most important information that the author wants to share
In both fiction and nonfiction, teaching students to determine importance allows them to move through a text coherently, leaving behind details that clog our retention, keeping only the critical pieces of information needed for concise comprehension.
YOU MAY ALSO LIKE TO READ:
5 Ideas for Teaching Students to Read Nonfiction
3 Easy Steps For Teaching Students to Use Nonfiction Text Features
INTRODUCE THE DETERMINING IMPORTANCE READING STRATEGY TO STUDENTS
As with any new concept, you’ll want to introduce this reading strategy with concrete examples that are simple for students to understand. To begin, play a fun game of “Pick 3.”. In this game, present students with several scenarios where they are required to pick the 3 most important things related to that topic. Take a baseball game for example (see anchor chart on the left). Provide students with several items that are related to going to a baseball and have them identify and justify the 3 most important items.
Ask students to choose the three most essentials items needed to play in a baseball game. Require students to justify their answer. Students most likely will decide that the mitt, bat, and baseball are the 3 most essential items because you need all 3 of those to play. The hat and shirt are nice to help you identify which team someone is playing on, but aren’t essential to actually playing the game. Likewise, popcorn might be a fun snack to have while watching a baseball game, but is certainly not essential.
To extend this activity even further, you may even want to break students up into groups, giving each group a different scenario to talk though.
To prepare for the activity, write the scenario on the front of an envelop (ex: going bowling) and write several item on index cards to be placed in the envelop. Provide each small group with an envelop and have groups decide on the 3 most important items as they relate to the scenario. When groups have had a chance to discuss, have each group share out their thinking. Possible scenarios might include:
going bowling: bowling ball, pizza, bowling shoes, bowling pins, soda, music
making an ice cream sundae: ice cream, bowl, sprinkles, ice cream scoop, hot fudge, cherry
going camping: tent, sleeping bag, frisbee, firewood, s’mores, matches
things to bring to school: bookbag, homework, lunch, pencils, paper, iPad
Depending on the age of your students, your item choices may be more or less obvious as to which 3 items makes the most sense. For older students, choose items for each scenario that will spark a greater debate, while with younger student, you might want to make it more obvious as to which 3 items are the most important.
MODELING HOW TO DETERMINE IMPORTANCE WHILE READING
To help students understand the concept of determining importance, it might be helpful to use a visual. For example, describe determining importance like draining a pot of boiling water and spaghetti into a strainer. When you pour the hot water and spaghetti into the strainer, the water slips through the holes, leaving only the noodles behind. You don’t need the water anymore, only the noodles. In the same way, when we read, our brain is like that strainer. We keep only the important things, and let everything else strain out. Choose a read aloud text to show this strategy in action. Ahead of time, create an anchor chart with two columns: Important Information and Interesting Details.
Prepare several sentence strips that you can tape up on your anchor chart as you read. On each sentence strip, write an importance piece of information OR an interesting detail from the read-aloud text that you plan to share. You will need several of each.
When it’s time to share your read-aloud, explain that as you read, you will stop often to record the information that is important to remember on one side, and record interesting details on the other side. As you come across the information that you wrote on each sentence strip, model how you decide if that piece of information is important or interesting. Be sure to justify your thinking.
Over the course of several days as you initially introduce this strategy with several read-aloud texts, gradually release more responsibility to your students. Allow them to begin adding to your anchor chart with their own thoughts about what they consider to be important/interesting. You might want to provide your students with several Post-it notes, stopping often for them to record a piece of information to be put up on either side of the chart Require students to justify their responses.
DETERMINING IMPORTANCE IN FICTIONAL TEXTS
Of course, the process of determining importance will vary depending on whether you’re reading fiction or nonfiction. With fiction, it’s important that students understand the overall structure of most fictional texts. This text structure will often help them to determine what’s important. Here’s what a typical fictional text looks like as a “story mountain:”
Help students to identify where on the story mountain their “important information” falls into. If it doesn’t fall easily onto the story mountain, it is likely not considered important information, but rather an interesting detail.
DETERMINING IMPORTANCE IN NONFICTION TEXTS
In nonfiction, however, the text structures can vary greatly. Nonfiction text structures include: descriptive, sequential, compare/contrast, cause/effect, and problem/solution. ). You might choose to use a graphic organizer unique to each structure to help students keep track of important information. (See following page for graphic organizer examples)
These graphic organizers will help students keep only the most important information top of mind.
Of course, determining importance in fiction and nonfiction is more than just remembering the important details so that students can summarize the text. Although this is where most teachers start their instruction on the determining importance reading strategy, it is not where it should stop.
Once students understand the concept of determining important details, we want to teach students take it a step further to determine other important pieces of information such as:
determine when and why a character begins to change
determine the importance of something a character says or does (and why it is important)
determine the importance of a story’s setting
determine the significance of an event in a story and how it will impact the rest of the story
determine the importance of a nonfiction text feature that an author includes (what is it trying to teach the reader?)
determine the most important theme in a story
determine the most important lesson learned in a story
determine important vocabulary introduced in a text
Each of the bullets above could potentially be individual mini-lessons or learning targets touched on in small guided reading groups.
CHOOSE TEXTS THAT ASSIST IN DETERMINING IMPORTANCE:
Of course we want students to be able to determine importance regardless or what book they are reading. However, as students have their first experiences working this this strategy, choosing books that provide obvious opportunities for students to pull out important information. This will help set students up for success and will train their brains to distinguish between important and interesting.
Here are some of my favorites: (affiliate links)
The Important Book by: Margaret Wise Brown (this is a great book to introduce the reading strategy)
Love Will See You Through by Angela Farris Watkins
The Stray Dog by Marc Simont
Grandfather’s Journey by Allen Say
PRACTICING DETERMINING IMPORTANCE
CREATE SIMPLE VISUALS TO REMIND STUDENTS TO DETERMINE IMPORTANCE
When first using a new reading strategy, students need constant reminders. Visuals such as bookmark to use while reading, or a classroom poster that is displayed on a reading strategy bulletin board work wonderfully to nudge students to focus on the important details while reading.
Continue to create anchor charts displaying important vs. interesting details that you find during read-alouds.
USE LINKtivity DIGITAL LEARNING GUIDES
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OF COURSE I have a LINKtivity for you to help teach determining importance. Of course! What else? Watch the video below for a sneak peek:
Here’s how it works:
In the Determining Importance LINKtivity, students first watch a short animated video clip that quickly catches their attention with fun doodles and images. The clip introduces what the strategy is and how readers use it.
From there they read alongside their “virtual reading buddy” to see the strategy applied to a text. While clicking through the digital book, each time the student comes across a thought bubble, they click on it and are brought to a new slide in the LINKtivity guide to see what their reading buddy is thinking!
Then, to take their learning to the next level, students read 3 additional high-interest reading passages to practice the strategy on their own. In a similar fashion as they did with their reading buddy, students click through the digital storybook and stop to determine importance along the way. The students can record their thinking on a recording sheet that goes along with the LINKtivity.
HAVE STUDENTS KEEP TRACK OF IMPORTANT INFORMATION VS. INTERESTING DETAILS WHILE READING
Having students write down the pieces of information that they deem important is key when it comes to informing you of their understanding of the strategy. From their written details you can see if they can sort out importance information from interesting details.
Writing down their thoughts also keeps them accountable for their learning and gives you an informal assessment.
ASSESSING YOUR STUDENTS ON DETERMINING IMPORTANCE
Assessment, whether it be formal or informal, drives instruction. For more informal assessments, take notes about a students use of the determining importance reading strategy during reading conferences or in small groups. Considering the following when observing the students’ use of the strategy:
Are students able to identify when something significant has happened in the story that they are reading?
Can students summarize the text using only important details?
Can students identify important characters and settings?
Do students pay attention to nonfiction text features and draw out important information found in those features?
Can students determine new and important vocabulary in the text?
Can students justify why something is important?
Can students determine important details from a text to identify themes and lessons learned from a story?
Finally, having a rubric written in kid-friendly language is especially helpful when providing feedback to a student on their ability to determine importance. The rubric can provide clear guidelines on how to determine importance while reading.
Resources for Determining Importance
Want to get your hands on the Determining Importance LINKtivity®?
Grab our Determining Importance LINKtivity and start using this ready-to-go resource that includes:
a teacher guide
a student LINKtivity
a student recording sheet
a student-friendly rubric
OR - you can get access to the Determining Importance LINKtivity® PLUS all the other reading comprehension strategies inside of LINKtivity® Learning - an ALL-ACCESS pass to every single LINKtivity® created (INCLUDING all 7 reading strategy LINKtivities!)