I teach my kids the “hand” to find the main idea in a passage/story/etc. (got this idea from somewhere on the internet). They have to answer the following questions to figure out the main idea: WHO-DID WHAT-WHEN-WHERE-WHY
We use a “hand” graphic organizer to help us complete this information. I have made a big “hand” for them to use as a visual (I’ll post a picture soon), and I found this “hand” graphic organizer on edhelper.com.
http://www.edhelperclipart.com/clipart/teachers/org-hand.pdf
i run read teach 