This strategy is great for developing students' oral language and literacy skills of recall of facts and details, distinguishing between fact and opinion, sequencing of events, recognizing cause and effect, and identifying the main idea.

Prior to the lesson, read the text to your students. Then use these ten important sentences that as a whole capture the events and main idea of the text. Here are some sample ideas of what to do with the sentences.

1. Sequencing Events-Using the ten important sentences, students place the sentences in order.

2. Distinguish Fact from Opinion-Use the ten important sentences or another set of sentences to have students distinguish between fact and opinion.

3. Cause and Effect-Using some of the ten important sentences or others in the text, discuss with students the relationship between cause and effect.

4. Determining Main Idea-Using the ten important sentences, the teacher asks students to locate which sentences tell the who, what, here, when, and why of the text.