Main Idea of The Great Kapok Tree

This lesson is designed to continue working with primary students to find the main idea as a reading comprehension strategy. The lesson uses the book, The Great Kapok Tree, by Lynne Cherry, and has students complete a graphic organizer to find the main idea of each page, and then tell the main idea of the story. This is the third lesson of a set of lessons designed to teach about the main idea of a story.

This lesson builds on the introduction to finding the main idea, and assumes that you have already been working with your students on finding main ideas in texts. If not, you might want to use the introductory lesson, Chrysanthemum. Finding main ideas is a key skill in the process of making sense of text.