Main Idea/Summary Stations

We are now in Week 3 of our STAAR Prep. 😐

We have been doing passages every 2 days to build our student's stamina and understanding of the material, but I wanted to try something different.

I incorporated 6 Stations to review our prior knowledge of Main Idea and Summary, since these are both readiness standards and heavily tested. The first day we did our station rotations, I allowed 30 minutes per station. The second day, only 20-25 minutes per station. The third day, we will only have one station to complete.

Students at Station 1

Station 1: #MainIdea

In this station, students are using a Studies Weekly from their Social Studies class as the text. Working with the Social Studies teacher on my team, we pulled Studies Weeklies that connect to what they are currently learning. These include the New Deal, World War II, Tuskegee Airmen, etc. The students seemed to love the connection. Students are reading an article, and then providing a hashtag to give the main idea of the article. Much to my surprise, many students didn't know what a hashtag was. *Teachable Moment* They used a Google Doc to document their hashtags.

Link to Station 1 Assignment: #MainIdea

Students at Station 2

Station 2: NewsELA (www.newsela.com)

I love NewsELA because students can log in using their school Google Accounts (no new saved passwords). It also lets me import my classes from Google Classroom - so easy!! So, I chose 4 articles with questions on Main Idea/Summary and Making Connections to assign to students. They read the article, completed the "Write" activity, and then took the "Quiz". If they finished early, they could choose from the other articles. 

It made it even better that Station 2 was on the couches!! 😏

Station 3: Main Idea Task Cards

Using some amazing Main Idea Task Cards I purchased from TPT, students are reading a short, interesting, paragraph and writing a Main Idea sentence. I created a Google Form for students to type and submit their sentence. I LOVE the ease of grading with a Google Form.

Link to Google Form: Main Idea Task Cards

Station 4: BrainPOP (www.brainpop.com)

Students at Station 4

Our gracious PTO bought us a BrainPOP license for the school year. This comes in handy so often. There are so many variations to the topic on there: Challenges, Games, Activities, Quizzes, etc.

Students at Station 5

Station 5: Paragraph Practice

Using an old book I found amongst my assortment of papers in the filing cabinet, I chose 4 half-page passages with connecting questions for students to answer. Each passage was 3-4 paragraphs long. The questions included finding the main idea or summary of each paragraph, the passage as a whole, and naming the passage. I loved how this broke it down by paragraph, as questions on the STAAR usually do.

Station 6: Summary Tweets

At this station, students use a different Studies Weekly, but still one that connects to their current Social Studies unit. After reading the articles, students were asked to write a summary using only 150 characters. This proved to be very difficult for them since they could only use the IMPORTANT information. Sometimes limiting to 150 characters is sooooo hard!! They found that out today too. Students used a Google Slide presentation I created to document their Tweets.

Students at Station 6

Link to Assignment: Summary Tweets