Besides academic vocabulary, I cannot think of a cross-curricular skill that is most often used in the classroom, in college, and in the world of work. Finding the main idea is paramount to understanding any piece of communication. According to Kelly Roell from ThoughtCo. (2019), “Finding the main idea of a paragraph or longer passage of text is one of the most important reading skills to master, along with concepts like making an inference, finding the author's purpose, or understanding vocabulary words in context.” Consider this, locating the main idea begins the discussion about the what and without that what there wouldn’t be a need to move toward the supporting details, or toward more discussion!