“What’s the Main Idea?”: Using Text Structure to Build Comprehension

Abstract

AbstractThis teaching tip aims to build awareness of using a text’s structure as a framework for building students’ reading comprehension. The authors detail the Framework for Accelerating the Strategic Comprehension of Text (FASCT) to support elementary students reading comprehension abilities by explicitly teaching students to use the structure of a text to support the development of a main idea statement after every text read. FASCT then teaches students to expand this main idea statement into a summary by adding key supporting details. Furthermore, this teaching tip outlines how teachers can implement FASCT instruction using any genre of text. Although comprehension instruction, such as FASCT, is only one part of the overall literacy block, it may be essential for building a solid foundation from which students’ complex comprehension skills can grow.