Central Ideas
Text Structure
Text Features
Theme
Grammar
100
This term refers to the most important point the author is trying to make about the topic.
What is the Central Idea
100
This text structure organizes information in order of time, often using dates or times.
What is Chronological Order?
100
This feature is text that is darker and thicker than normal text, used to show key vocabulary words.
What is Bold Print?
100
A story about a dog waiting for his owner every day for ten years likely has a theme about this quality.
What is Loyalty?
100
This punctuation mark is used to separate items in a list or to join two independent clauses with a conjunction (FANBOYS).
What is a Coma?
200
These specific pieces of information, such as facts, examples, and statistics, are used to prove the central idea is true.
What are Supporting Details?
200
Signal words like "however," "similarly," "on the other hand," and "both" indicate this text structure.
What is Compare and Contrast?
200
This text feature appears underneath or next to an image to explain what the image shows.
What is a Caption?
200
"Don't judge a book by its cover" or "Slow and steady wins the race" are examples of themes, often called this.
What are Morals (or Lessons)?
200
A sentence that contains two independent clauses joined by a semicolon or a comma + conjunction (e.g., "I ran fast, but I missed the bus").
What is a Compound Sentence?
300
A central idea should always be written as a complete sentence, whereas the "topic" is usually written as this.
What is a word or phrase?
300
An article describing why polar ice caps are melting and the subsequent rising sea levels is using this structure.
What is Cause and Effect?
300
These are like mini-titles found throughout the text that tell you what the next section will be about.
What are Headings (or Subheadings)?
300
Theme is generally found in literary text (fiction), while Central Idea is generally found in this type of text.
What is Informational Text (Non-fiction)?
300
In the sentence "The dog wagged its tail," the word "its" is this part of speech.
What is a Possessive Noun?
400
A "detail" supports the central idea. If the central idea is "Sharks are excellent hunters," a supporting detail might be that sharks have sharp ________.
What are Teeth (or senses)?
400
This structure presents a dilemma or issue and suggests one or more ways to fix it.
What is Problem and Solution?
400
Found at the back of a book, this lists topics alphabetically and tells you exactly which page numbers they are on.
What is the Index?
400
You can often infer the theme by analyzing how this story element changes from the beginning to the end of the book.
Who is the Main Character (or Protagonist)?
400
This type of word shows the relationship between a noun and another word in the sentence (e.g., in, on, under, beside, through).
What is a Preposition?
500
Sometimes the central idea is not stated directly. You have to put the details together to figure it out. This is called making an _________.
What is an Inference?
500
If an author describes a room by starting at the doorway and describing items left to right, they are using this structure (also called Spatial).
What is Descriptive Structure?
500
This visual feature organizes numerical data to make it easier to understand or compare.
What is a Graph?
500
A story about a robot learning to love likely shares a theme with the story of Pinocchio. This proves that themes transcend this element of storytelling.
What is Genre (or Setting)?
500
To separate an introductory element from the rest of the sentence, you use a comma. Example: "However, I still want to go."
What is an Introductory/Phrase/Transitional Word?