Brown Bag Book Club: main Idea focus

We just finished reading: 

and have been revisiting Main idea and details

After some blog stalking for follow up activities I came across the Brown Bag Book Club from 

thefirstgradeparade and knew I had my activity.

I passed out brown bags to my students which had a set of cards inside. The cards had details and the main idea from the story on them.  Students then got into partner pairs to discuss and figure out which card contained the main idea and which cards held the details.  Using the book for support, they did a fabulous job in their groups reasoning through why certain cards were just details and not the "big picture". 

They then glued their cards in the correct places on their bag and decorated their bags with visual representations.  While decorating they had to also discuss parts of the book they liked, how they felt when reading the book, etc to tie in the whole "book club" feel. 

They loved it.

getting the groups set up

 our completed bags

another added bonus of the brown bag book clubs is that while discussing the books you can fill the bags with popcorn.

This idea can obviously focus on various comprehension strategies and I plan using it again in the future.