Reading comprehension is a combination of skills involved with interpreting written words. The desired outcome is that the reader understand the main idea of whatever he's reading so that he can receive the message. This is a key objective because understanding the main idea of a paragraph is crucial to a student's ability to pull information from texts, a skill that is necessary long after students leave school.
When learning to get the main idea from a paragraph, students can aim to identify the types of sentences that comprise it. The objectives of this are identifying the topic sentence and supporting details within a paragraph. A topic sentence tells the reader what the point of the passage is while the supporting details add to the validity of the statement. These tasks aid in making readers stronger researchers and sharpen critical thinking skills.
Anytime a student reads, she may increase her vocabulary. This is particularly true if the text contains some words that are unfamiliar. This makes learning vocabulary words an implicit task in getting the main idea of a paragraph. Vocabulary words that are part of the objective can be used in the paragraph to allow students exposure to the word before practicing sentences on their own.
Inevitably there will be words in a passage that a reader is unfamiliar with and have no way of looking up. If she must still get the main idea of a paragraph, then she must search for context clues, using the words that she does know to extract meaning from the paragraph or passage. This process aids in getting the main idea of a paragraph while enhancing a student's ability to read at higher levels.