Main Idea with Fiction

My third grade team does a main idea intervention three times a week for thirty minutes.  We are trying to keep the kids' attention and make things fun so we've been working with mentor texts.  Our librarian sent the book, I Repeat, Don't Cheat! my way and I was very excited to read it with the class.

The kids loved it because it dealt with FRIEND ISSUES (which is a drama we deal with on a daily basis :-)).  Anyway we discussed how finding the main idea of fiction is different than finding the main idea of non-fiction.  We decided that we would read this book and at the end write the main idea of the story.

After reading the story (I was happy to see two excellent examples of similes in it!), the kids brainstormed main ideas and I recorded everyone's ideas on a chart.  Then I asked them to ask themselves, "Is this what the book is mostly about?" after I read each main idea.  After that, we crossed out the main ideas that did not focus on what the book was mostly about.  Then, we looked at what was left over and underlined the parts we liked about each of the two main ideas.  We decided to combine the two examples and add a part that incorporated the ending of the story.  It took about a half hour and I was excited with our results!

UPDATE:  Found this cute visual (see below) to help my students better understand how details help support the main idea.  Love!!!!  For a main idea graphic organizer, I've been having the kids trace their hand.  Then they put the main idea in the middle and write 5 details to support the main idea in the middle.  If they can't find five, they have to make up a detail (which could be an opinion) that fits with the main idea.  They mark these with a star so when I check, I know that the detail did not come from the passage.