Understanding Multiple Main Ideas Worksheets

Related ELA Standard: RI.5.2

Core Standard
Answer Keys Here

The main idea of any paragraph is the central point or concept that is being examined. There are many circumstances where a paragraph has multiple themes or concepts that need to be understood. When this happens it is difficult to gauge the motivation of the writer. You can break these apart into smaller roles. The overall goal of the reader is to understand which of these concepts is the more prevalent theme. These worksheets will help students pick apart paragraphs that contain multiple main ideas.

Multiple Main Ideas Worksheets:

Early Domesticated Dogs – Have you ever caught yourself trying to pet a wolf?

Bonsai – I never known how common this word is in the world.

Scientific Discoveries – Darwin always seems to come up with DNA.

The Structure of the Human Eye – What a complex organ the eye is.

National Animals – Are you kidding me Scotland?

Save the Birds! – Breakdown the story in your first try at story breakdown.

Monkeys of the Old World – Both the great Orangutan and the Chimpanzee have a good claim for precedence.

Are the Birds Disappearing? – Where are they all going?

The Brown Bear – We do have you underlining a ton here.

Wild Dogs – Based on the reading, label each sentence as a main idea or a supporting detail.

Lions and Tigers – A little multiple choice for finding the main ideas in the text.

The Plight of the Tiger – Did you know that more tigers can be found in captivity than in the wild? I didn't!

The Antikythera – The Antikythera ship, which smashed against the rocks on the Greek coast 2,000 years ago, was the first shipwreck ever investigated.

Typhoid Mary – Mary Mallon, known to history as Typhoid Mary, was linked to 47 cases of typhoid and three deaths in New York City in 1907.

Terra Cotta Army – China's first emperor, 2000 years ago, commissioned an "army" of soldier statues made from terra cotta.

How Can Text Have Multiple Main Ideas?


All literary texts, whether fictional or non-fictional, academic or non-academic, formal or informal, always have a main or central idea which the whole text addresses throughout. It is very common to expect from a literary text to address just one main idea and focus on a single theme since most of the famous novels, stories, and essays we read in schools address one particular theme and are based on a single main idea.


However, sometimes authors like to write their texts with more than one central idea and multiple themes. Here are some of the basic aspects related to a text that can lead to more than one main ideas being addressed by it:


Multiple Protagonists or Antagonists


Authors usually like to have one central figure in whatever they write and use this character as the main tool to convey the main idea of the text. However, there are some works of literary fiction in both verse and prose, that revolve around the lives of more than one characters. These characters have their individual and detached struggles and decisive roles which they play in the text and thus give birth to more than one main idea being addressed by the text.


Depiction of Multiple Events


If the text is representing more than one event, that are either interlinked to one another or occurring separately, there is a possibility to more than one idea being presented by such text. Each individual event and the course of actions taking place during that particular event will address one main theme, consequently making the complete text multiple themed with one text being represented by each event.


Through Describing One Generic Thing in Detail


Essays and other texts representing one main and generic event or person can represent multiple main ideas through exploring the various aspects of that one main event in depth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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