Sentence Unscrambling: A Simple Trick to Build Reading Comprehension
Why Main Points and Supporting Details Are Hard for Emerging Readers
A significant hurdle children face in learning to read is distinguishing the main point from supporting points. When a child cannot identify a main point in a piece of writing, comprehension breaks down. If the child cannot see how supporting details reinforce and explain that point, the writing feels incoherent. Instead, the child experiences it as a hodge-podge of unrelated statements.
What Struggling Readers Often Miss
It is easy for experienced readers to overlook the difficulty that emerging readers face in understanding a piece of writing’s structural hierarchy. Especially when the subject matter is unfamiliar. During my teaching training at Madonna University, I took a class on reading comprehension. As part of the coursework, all aspiring teachers were required to tutor at-risk children. Particularly, in reading in financially distressed school districts. The experience was eye-opening. The students I encountered struggled to comprehend basic texts—and when I say basic, I’m talking about “See Spot run” level books. Sure, they could read the words on the page. However, when asked to explain what they just read in their own words, they couldn’t.
How to Do a Sentence Unscrambling Exercise
A major issue for the students was that they’d never learned the structure of writing, relating to a topic sentence and supporting sentences. My work with these at-risk students focused on teaching them to distinguish main points from supporting points in a paragraph. A fantastic exercise for doing this is sentence unscrambling.
In a sentence unscrambling exercise, you take a moderate-sized paragraph of, say, five to seven sentences, and scramble the sentences so they are out of order. Then you ask the student to put the sentences in proper hierarchy with the topic sentence at the top, followed by supporting statements.
I found it helpful to print the sentences on a piece of paper and then cut them up into individual “strips.” The sentences could then be manually rearranged, adding a tactile dimension to the exercise. However, there are many ways you can do it and make it your own.
Teaching Paragraph Structure: Topic, Support, Conclusion
Before the child begins, reinforce the concept of paragraph structure by using topic sentences, supporting sentences, and concluding points. Some sentences convey a “big picture” or a “main point,” while other sentences are examples, facts, or reasons relating to that main point. And others “wrap up” or summarize what has been said. Understanding the different types of sentences and their purposes helps children see how they relate to one another.
Then you present the child with the paragraph, but scrambled; the sentences are out of order. The child must put the sentences in the proper order, with a topic sentence first, followed by supporting sentences, and the conclusion last.
Coaching Kids to Explain Their Choices
As they do this, encourage them to talk through their choice. For example, “This is a supporting sentence because it is adding a detail about the main point,” or “This sentence is a conclusion because it is wrapping everything up.” If they have a hard time verbalizing their thoughts, you can guide them with leading questions. (“See how this sentence sounds like it is giving a big picture? What type of sentence is that?”)
A Sentence Unscrambling Example (Car Cleaning Paragraph)
Here’s an example of a sentence unscrambling exercise about cleaning your car. You present the child with the following sentences:
Others vacuum the seats and floors to keep the inside neat and fresh.
Many also wipe down the windows so it’s easier and safer to see while driving.
If you want your car to stay in good shape, isn’t it worth taking the time to keep it clean?
Some wash the outside with soap and water to get rid of dirt and grime.
People clean their cars in different ways to keep them looking nice and running well.
The child is asked to identify (1) the topic sentence, (2) three supporting sentences, and (3) the conclusion. Besides evaluating the content of each sentence to distinguish between “big ideas” and details, kids can also be taught to pay attention to context clues, such as the use of transitional phrases. For example, the second sentence begins with “many also”; that “also” indicates that the sentence supports another idea.
Rewriting the Paragraph in Correct Order
After the child successfully arranges the sentences (either with or without parental guidance), the next step is to have them rewrite the paragraph in proper order so they can see it all put together, in this case:
People clean their cars in different ways to keep them looking nice and running well. Some wash the outside with soap and water to get rid of dirt and grime. Others vacuum the seats and floors to keep the inside neat and fresh. Many also wipe down the windows so it’s easier and safer to see while driving. If you want your car to stay in good shape, isn’t it worth taking the time to keep it clean?
Sometimes there is flexibility in the order of the supporting sentences, but the important point is that the main ideas are distinguished from the supporting ideas and the conclusion, so that the child comes to understand the types of sentences and how they interrelate to drive home a single point.
Why Sentence Unscrambling Builds Strong Readers
In my opinion, these sorts of exercises are good to do with young readers, even if they appear to be doing alright with comprehension. If they are doing well, it reinforces comprehension by highlighting the structural interrelation of sentences within a paragraph. If they are struggling, it helps them understand the logic of paragraph construction, enabling them build the tools they need to tease out what a text is actually saying. While it might seem tedious, exercises like sentence unscrambling train the brain to look for hierarchies of meaning within texts, a skill that will only develop as students tackle increasingly complicated material with each successive grade.
Sentence unscrambling is a simple but powerful way to train young readers to recognize structure, logic, and meaning in writing. By learning to spot topic sentences, supporting details, and conclusions, children begin to experience reading not as a jumble of words but as a clear message. It’s a skill that pays off for life, especially as texts grow longer and more complex.
What are your thoughts on this topic? Join other homeschooling parents and me in the Homeschool Connections Facebook Group or in the HSC Community to continue the conversation.
