Strategies to Determine the Main Idea in an Informational Text

Do you want to be better at finding the main idea of an informational text? Learn three useful strategies for determining the main idea through our video, activities and exercises!

Main Idea – Definition

The main idea of a text is the main message that the author wants the reader to know or understand about a topic.

Key details in a text support the main idea. They are sentences with important information that explain or define the main idea, and they give the reader more details.

It is useful to understand how to find the main idea and details of a text to better understand it and to know the most important information about the text.

Techniques and Strategies for Finding the Main Idea

In order to find the main idea of the text, you need to read it carefully and pay attention to the words or phrases that are being repeated in the text. They can give you a clue about the topic and the idea. It is important not only to skim the text, but read every word.

In this text, we will look at three techniques to help determine the main idea of an informational text. We can ask about important points the text makes about the topic, look for a pop-out sentence, or identify the who and the what of a text.

Finding the Main Idea – Practice

Let’s read a text about mushrooms and practise all three strategies to determine the main idea!

Let’s determine the main idea. First, identify the topic, which is mushrooms. Then, ask yourself: What are the most important points this text makes about the mushrooms?

• The text states that mushrooms ”come in a wide array of colours, including bright red and yellow, as well as darker shades, or even transparent”, and that they can ”look very different in terms of size and shape”.

These key details explain the characteristics of mushrooms, which means that the main idea is: “Mushrooms are a type of fungus that come in all shapes, colours and sizes.” As you can see from this example, sometimes the main idea is found in the first sentence.

Let’s read more:

To determine the main idea, let’s identify a pop-out sentence. A pop-out sentence is a sentence that stands out and gives an overview of the text you are reading. In this text, mushrooms can be found in a variety of environments is a pop-out sentence and the main idea, since the rest of the text describes the environments in which mushrooms can be found.

Let’s read one more paragraph and identify the main idea using the who and the what questions:

Let’s use main idea questions to help find the main idea. Who and what is this paragraph about? Mushrooms are who the text is about, and there are details that explain what jobs they have in the ecosystem. The main idea of this paragraph is “Important jobs mushrooms have in the ecosystem.”

These techniques for identifying the main idea can be used in different types of texts.

Finding the Main Idea – Summary

Now let’s review what we have learned about the strategies to determine the main idea.

The main idea of a text is what the author wants the reader to know or understand about a topic. You can use different strategies to determine the main idea of a text:

• identify the topic and the most important points the author makes about the topic;
• find the pop-out sentence;
• identify the who and the what of a text.

Now you know the best strategies to determine the main idea of an informational text. To better understand the concept of the main idea of a text and why it's important, check out our video, worksheets, and examples and practice exercises for improving main idea comprehension!

Frequently Asked Questions about the Main Idea