1. Ad Prima Charter School
Distinguishing the Difference Between Essential and Non-essential Information Tutorial for Extra Practice
Ad Prima Charter School

2. PA Standards
R7.B Identify, explain, interpret, describe, and/or analyze bias and propaganda techniques in nonfictional text.

3. Why do we need to know how to find essential information?
People are constantly trying to convince you to think like them or buy something in the written and spoken word. You need to be able to evaluate an article or something you ear in an effective way in order to deterring if the thing they are offering is a waste of your time or something you may benefit from.
How do we sift through it all of this information to find what we need?
Reading for essential information is one way!

4. Steps to finding essential information.
The first step in doing this is to determine your own purpose for reading.
There are two major purposes of reading.
To find information and to be entertained.
Before you start reading you will want to define these purposes further in order to concentrate your efforts in reading.

5. 2 purposes for reading
Find Information
Be entertained!

6. What might we need to find information for?
School :
research project/writing
all subjects that require reading information which is all of them!
finding a school to go to if you do not want public
finding the right college for you
Can you think of any more? Add them to your paper!

7. What might we need to find information for?
Future Job :
you will always need to look up something or even create it in the field you are going to go in.
What do you want to be when you get out of college?
Brainstorm a list of things you might have to look up or research specific for your job!

8. What might we need to find information for?
Consumer product that you want/need
computer
i-pod
music/mp3s
hair products
going on a trip
movies
entertainment
There is much more!

9. What might we need to find information for?
Citizenship!
Taking into consideration different candidates for political positions on the local, state and national level.
Protesting a bill if it does not meet the people’s needs. Using documents to problem solve.
Finding out the laws in your community so you are not fined for them or punished for breaking them. Saying you didn’t know is not an excuse!
Can you think of anything else you might need to know living in a community of people?

10. We may want to be entertained!
When looking for essential information in entertainment, you just need to keep in mind the big ideas/themes and some details in literature as you read. Knowing these things are good reading skills when reading narratives. A story map can help you keep characters and details straight in your head in order to fully understand the story!

11. Main Idea and Details
As you read keep in mind the main ideas and details that support the main idea. Essential information is located in the main idea in the text. Sometimes students can get lost in the details, and the author creates so many details at times for entertainment reasons. However, if you have the main idea in mind as you read all the details, you will comprehend the text much better!

12. Vocabulary
Main idea
The most important idea expressed in a paragraph or in an entire essay. The main idea may be directly stated in a topic sentence, or you may have to look at all the details in the paragraph and make an inference, or educated guess, about its main idea. The main idea will be what the essay or paragraph is mostly about.
Main idea looks at the big picture.

13. Vocabulary
Details
Details are supporting facts or opinions that correlate with a main idea of an essay or paragraph.
details look at the small picture or more closely at the topic.

14. Vocabulary
Explicit
The information is directly stated in the passage. There is not question about it. You can read the exact words right there.
Remember…EXplicit and EXplain. When we explain something we tell all the facts with it.

15. Vocabulary
Implicit
Information that is not directly stated. We need to read between the lines and infer the meaning of the text or main idea. When we make an inference we read between the lines and use our head and the text to make an educated guess about the information.
Remember…Implicit and INference. IM and IN are similar prefixes.

16. Practice
Use the attached ditto to practice finding explicit and implicit main ideas!

17. Another way to focus on essential information.
Use the 5W-HOW Questions!
Who?
What?
When?
Where?
Why?
How?
Are usually questions answered in the lead of a newspaper article. The lead is the first paragraph of the article.

18. How do we find the 5W-How?
When thinking about these essential questions you need to use logic to figure out what to put in each section. When reading a newspaper article or document, you will not always read the answers to these questions in the first paragraph. You need to connect the text as a whole in order to understand these essential questions.

19. Example questions to think about to answer the 5W-How?
Who – Who is the article mostly about? Think about who is doing the action happening in the article.
What – What do the events involve? Is there a name to the actions?
When – When did this event happen or when was the article written?

20. Example questions to think about to answer the 5W-How?
Where – Where is the action taking place? Where will the action take place if it didn’t happen yet?
Why – Why did these things happen? What were the circumstances for them to happen?
How – What was the sequence of events that allowed this thing to happen?

21. Note on How, Why and What
How and What can overlap sometimes. the what is just identifying the name. The how should be a little more detailed than the what.
Why and How can be hard to distinguish the difference between. Remember, the why is the BECAUSE of what has happened. The How goes into an explanation of the sequence of events of what is was that actually happened.

22. Why the 5W-HOW?
This strategy would be especially useful when reading newspaper articles.
We could also use it when trying to evaluate public documents in our communities regarding politics and activities.

23. Practice.
Practice finding the 5W-HOW? using the attached ditto!