At Glen Lea the fifth grade students are working on main idea or what the story/paragraph is mostly about. We did an activity where students had to look at pictures that were in a brown paper bag and decide what the main idea was. They students learned that the pictures were the details. The details, when put all together, would lead to a topic or main idea. Students quickly learned if they did not use all of the details, they would not do such a great idea of figuring out the main idea.
Each bag contained four to seven pictures. Students were grouped into four groups and were allowed to discuss what they thought the main idea was. After looking at all the pictures, each student opened a link to padlet, and typed in their own idea. The classes loved using padlet to see all of the ideas and it was immediate. 
