Read a short story or an excerpt of a longer narrative aloud to your students. Play "popcorn," a game in which students read for as long as they can before hollering out "popcorn," and then designating another student to read. This is a game that is good for auditory learners who get to listen to the story and for kinesthetic learners who get to participate in a game.
Ask your students, after the story is completed, to draw a single picture that could explain to someone who could not read what the story is about. After the pictures have been drawn, ask students to display their art to the class and explain how the picture represents the story. The artwork will appeal to visual and kinesthetic learners and the explanations will reinforce auditory learners.
Sort your students into groups of no more than four. Ask them to write short, 30 or 60 second plays that retell the story. Allow them to write down their lines and provide them with a few props taken from the story. This exercise is excellent for all three types of learners.
Have your students write down one sentence that describes what the story is about. They shouldn't share these answers yet. Then have them write down what the story is about in a single word. Now ask them to share their sentences and words, and after listening to, drawing and performing the story, their answers will begin to fall in line.
Reverse the entire process. Learning about main ideas is not important just to teach students that they can boil information down, it is also pertinent for them to learn to build upon these main ideas. So, give them a single word and have them make a drawing that represents that word, have them perform a play that is about that word and have them write their own stories that use that word as inspiration.