All reading can be reduced to Nouns and Verbs. The more nouns and verbs you understand the easier reading becomes. There are obviously other literary and rhetorical devices that make a text engaging but if the purpose of reading is for simple comprehension, then nouns and verbs are the most important things you need. They are the fundamentals that all other skills can be built on. For example, if you were learning the sport of volleyball, there is one skill that is non negotiable, passing. If you can’t pass you can’t play. Knowing Nouns is passing and knowing Verbs would be like moving your feet. If you can pass a ball and move your feet, we can play the game of Volleyball.

When you read a text, you are trying to pass the ideas that the writer is serving to you. Some ideas are simple lobs: “The cat sat on top of the fence.” Other ideas or complicated jump serves, “The malevolent feline hopped on the fence and sat while waiting for the mouse to show himself.” The gist of most sentences can be boiled down to subject (Cat) and predicate (Sat). I like to say Main/Important Noun and Main/Important Verb. If you read the last example sentence, and say the main idea was that the cat sat, then you have a starting point. This is the foundation that we will build our understanding on.

If we understand the cat sat, we can begin to ask simple questions like Why was the cat sitting? And How was the cat sitting? Where was the cat sitting? Who was the Cat waiting for?  Answering these questions will give us a better understanding of the Main idea of the sentence. 

Texts are made up of more than just sentences; they are made up of paragraphs, headings, sections, and chapters.Finding the Important Nouns and Verbs is  crucial for any student to find and understand the Main Idea of any text. 

I’m not saying that everyone should know every Noun and every Verb in existence. There is obviously a time and a place for using context clues and looking up definitions, but what I am saying is students should be better at distinguishing between nouns and verbs in a text. Lets see an example of this kind of thinking:

In the example below, students are asked to read a text and determine its Main Idea.

First, a student should find the subject and predicate. When I need students to close read texts I highlight the important nouns blue and the important verbs red. 

The Following is an example text an elementary school student could see:

Read the following Text: 

Not all endangered species are animals. Plants can be in danger of disappearing forever, too. There are more than 550 endangered plants in the United States. Insects and animals depend on plants for survival. Also, many medicines are made from plants. And of course, plants supply much of our food. Some people are working hard to save endangered plants, and it’s a good thing, too!

What is the Main Idea?

A. Endangered plants are important to insects and animals. 

B. Animals are endangered.

C. Endangered plants are important and should be saved. 

If we ask a student what is the text about? A student can usually see that the text is about plants. Then if we ask the student, what are the plants doing this could get tricky. The plants are disappearing, endangered, making, and supplying. So to clarify, we ask the student to make a summary sentence in their mind. 

Summary sentence: Plants are disappearing and this is bad because humans use plants for a lot of different reasons. 

Now we compare the summary sentence with the other options:

What is the Main Idea?

A. Endangered plants are important to insects and animals. (Detail, not the main idea)

B. Animals are endangered. (Detail, not the main idea)

C. Endangered plants are important and should be saved. (Best answer for Main Idea) 

Let’s look at another example: 

Read the following Text:

Nike was the Greek goddess of victory. Her name actually means “victory” in Greek and is pronounced NEE-kay. Nike went to war with the Greeks and helped them win battles. She also led them to victory in other areas, including athletics. Today, we know Nike best from a line of athletic products that has borrowed her name.

What is the Main Idea?

A. To explain that Nike helped the Greeks win wars

B. To explain that Nike led the Greeks to victory in athletics

C. To explain who Nike was

A student should quickly understand that the text is about Nike and that she was a Greek goddess and helped the Greeks win wars. (summary sentence)

What is the Main Idea?

A. To explain that Nike helped the Greeks win wars (Simple Detail)

B. To explain that Nike led the Greeks to victory in athletics (Simple Detail)

C. To explain who Nike was (Main Idea because it is the best answer that summarizes what most of the text was about.) 

In Both of the examples, Students benefit from being able to identify the Main/Important Nouns and Verbs to help them understand the Main Idea of the text. Being able to distinguish between Nouns and Verbs is an important reading skill that often gets overlooked after kids leave 2nd grade. This is a problem because anyone who has ever played a sport knows how important it is to practice fundamentals. Reading is a sport of its own. In a future post I will discuss how I have students identify important Nouns and Verbs while reading grade appropriate texts.