Final answer:
The teaching strategy being used for students to identify the main idea is determining importance. This involves picking out key details and facts that are essential to comprehend the text's central message, which is crucial for reading comprehension in various disciplines.
Step-by-step explanation:
In teaching students to identify the main idea, the strategy the teacher is using is determining importance. This teaching strategy involves examining a text closely to pick out key details, facts, and ideas that are critical to understanding the overall point or central message. This process is integral to summarizing, as it necessitates recognizing what is significant in the text and cannot be omitted without losing the text's essential meaning. When a student is asked to find the main idea of a piece of literature, they are being trained in the art of detecting the essence of what is being communicated. This skill is paramount for reading comprehension and is applicable across various subjects and disciplines, including English, History, and Social Studies. While other strategies like summarizing, predicting, and inferring are related and can support understanding, it is the skill of determining importance that allows a student to distill information down to the main idea.