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10 Key Details Examples You’ll Actually Want To Teach
Tara Shanley
August 24, 2025
We know that guiding students to grasp what they read truly is at the heart of your work. Teaching students how to find, use, and understand key details in a text can be one of the skills you teach to make this goal more achievable.
Yet, finding key details in a text is one of the trickier literacy skills for students to master, especially when they’re just starting to learn to read and make sense of texts. They may pick up on how to find the main idea more quickly, but they can’t explain how they know. Or they might not be able to find the main idea because they don’t understand how to discern key details from less important ones.
To make it easier for you to teach this skill, we’re sharing content and activities that highlight key details examples that you can bring into your lessons and help your students understand why this skill matters and how they can use it independently.
[10 examples of key details in relevant, real-world content](id-examples)
Understanding what examples of key details look like in texts they’ll read can help students recognize them more easily. Here are some common types of key details that writers include in their work to make arguments, support claims, and share their point of view.
Plus, we’ve included articles and text sets from Newsela ELA to make it easier for you to teach your students about each type of key detail—without spending hours searching and vetting online content on your own!
1. Comparisons and contrasts
These key details highlight how different elements—like people, places, ideas, or situations—are similar or different from one another.
The article “Confirmed: New phase of matter is solid and liquid at the same time” helps you illustrate what a comparison key detail looks like. In the article, scientists show how groups of potassium atoms compare to other elements. They have properties that reflect both solid and liquid states.
The article “Should college athletes play for free?” helps you show students what a contrast key detail looks like. The author compares two situations: Whether or not to pay college athletes for participating in school sports.
Those discussing the issue say paying athletes will nullify the amateur status of college sports. That’s in contrast to the idea that athletes think that if they put in the work, it’s fair to receive compensation from organizations using their names and likenesses on television, in program marketing, and for merchandise generated from playing for a school team.
2. Statistics
Statistics are numerical key details, usually shown in percentages or ratios. They provide precise data that upholds an argument or claim.
The article “Want to buy a torpedo bat? Here’s how you can hit home runs, too” helps you show students what a statistical key detail looks like within a text. The numerical data shows that Cincinnati Reds player Elly De La Cruz went 4-for-5 at bat with two home runs using a torpedo bat, which contributed to a 14-3 victory over the Texas Rangers.
This data supports the argument that torpedo bats could make already-great baseball players even better.
3. Results
Results are numerical or non-numerical key details that show the outcomes of tests, experiments, or processes.
The article “It’s no fable: Experiments reveal raccoons’ intelligence” helps you show students what results key details look like. The author explains how scientists wanted to know if raccoons could understand cause and effect.
They then go through the steps of the experiment to show that the scientists modeled a behavior and the raccoons replicated it to get the desired outcome, showing they did have some knowledge of cause and effect.
4. Impact
Impact details show the effects of results on a particular person, place, thing, or situation.
The article “Big cats that once roamed the world have less space to call home” gives an example of impact key details. It shows how the results of factors such as human migration, poaching, and global warming have affected the West African lion population.
For example, farmers are moving onto lands traditionally known as lion ranges, decreasing the areas where they can live and grow.
5. Graphs and charts
Visuals like graphs and charts can be key details that show the relationships among different data sets. They are an additional way to share information that’s not as easily captured or understood in text.
When used with other content that provides background knowledge about World War II, students can use the graph to see what the GNP was before the war and how it spiked during the war.
6. Quotations
Quotations are key details that give word-for-word accounts from an authority or an eyewitness.
It quotes his son Matt, who we can consider an authority on his father, who said Salinger would not want the attention of the exhibit if he were alive.
7. Sensory descriptors
Sensory descriptors are key details that describe how to experience a thing or situation with one or more of the five senses.
The article “Sensational: How different are animals' senses?” gives an example of sensory key details. It tells us how dogs smell out of each nostril, and how this special skill helps them easily pinpoint the direction of a smell, which is harder for humans.
Especially when covering math topics, it’s helpful to anchor key details and concepts to the main idea with real-world examples. In this case, when trying to describe how percentages and money work together, the author chose to show how to calculate the change in price using a fictional situation based on a real-life scenario.
9. Anecdotes
Anecdotes are short stories or explanations that serve as key details about people, places, things, ideas, or situations.
The article “Native Americans take control of their story” gives an example of an anecdotal key detail. It paraphrases a story from Sneve’s childhood and gives background on why she’s passionate about the Native American Public Telecommunications (NAPT) cause, and her authority to speak on the issue.
10. Definitions
Definition key details are short explanations that tell what a word means. They may include synonyms to help provide more meaning and context about the unknown word.
Explaining what the word “debut” means in this context helps support the point that Dale, the French bulldog, became an interesting character in the new live-action remake.
[Actionable strategies to help students find key details](id-tips)
Teaching students to identify key details goes beyond just showing examples. The skill-and-drill approach of doing that over and over isn’t enough to make the skill stick. Getting intentional about keeping students engaged and varying your instructional techniques can help. Here are some strategies you can integrate into your lessons:
Modeling
When you’re showing examples of key details in class, you’re already doing modeling. But this technique goes deeper than just putting examples on the board and expecting students to memorize them. Try some of these modeling techniques
Think alouds: Read a text out loud and verbalize your thought process for recognizing key details. This helps students understand the thinking behind searching a text for important information.
Guided reading: Work with smaller student groups to provide personalized attention and specific support as they practice identifying key details.
Recipe analogy: Explain the relationship between the main idea and key details by comparing them to a recipe. The main idea is the finished product, like an apple pie. The key details are the essential ingredients—such as apples, sugar, and water—that you need to make it.
Visual aids and graphic organizers
Having students pull out key details and arrange them visually can help them recognize these elements in a text and learn how to use them for comprehension and writing. Some examples of popular visual aids and graphic organizers include:
Anchor charts: Create a visual reference tool with your students that illustrates concepts, ideas, and processes related to key details.
T-Charts: Use graphic organizers to help students record the main idea and key details, which is especially useful for longer texts or individual chapters within a book.
Web charts: When planning writing, students can use web charts to place the main idea in the central bubble and connect supporting key details around it. Aim for a minimum of three key details per paragraph for the best support.
Flip books: Use multi-page flipbooks with the text title on the front, individual key details on the inner pages, and the main idea on the last page. This visual can demonstrate how key details build up to the main idea.
Engaging activities
Keep students interested in learning and looking for key details in texts with activities that don’t even feel like skill building (even though they are). Try:
“I Spy” games: Play a memory game where students quickly observe an image and then recall specific key details for it after you cover up the image. This activity helps them develop focus on the details rather than the big picture.
Matching activities: Present a main idea with several potential key details, including some extraneous ones. Have students select the key details that truly support the main idea and discuss their choices.
Share-Share-Switch: Have students partner up to share the key details from their readings and have their partner guess the main idea. Then have them switch roles so that the giver is the guesser, and vice versa.
Writing support
Identifying and using the main idea and key details are necessary skills to help students become better writers. Try these tips to help them incorporate key details strategies into their drafts and final copies:
Prewriting: Encourage students to use prewriting techniques like creating outlines and using graphic organizers to help them plan their writing. These tools can help them establish a main idea and brainstorm key details to support it.
Regular conversations: Engaging in spoken communication can also influence better writing. Have students do small group discussions or even record themselves telling a story and watch the footage back to observe where they conveyed the main idea and key details, and how they could improve on it when they write.
Support scaffolds
Finding key details is a skill that follows students throughout their educational journey. Try these tips to help scaffold students from the basics of key details discovery to using them in more concrete ways, like for writing and argumentation:
Pictures to paragraphs: Use simple pictures with your youngest students to help them identify the key details and main idea. Then progress to simple sentences and finally whole paragraphs.
Rereads: Encourage students to reread texts multiple times. Repeated exposure helps them identify the main idea and key details more effectively.
Summarize: Have students practice restating the main idea and key details using their own words. Start by asking them to summarize single points and then expand to complete sentences to deepen their comprehension.
Teaching key details with Newsela
With Newsela ELA, it’s easy to provide examples of key details for content-rich instruction with relevant, real-world examples that match your lessons. Plus, it’s easy to check students’ comprehension to discover if they’re learning and can use this skill independently with features like:
Want access to these and other great features? Sign up for your free Newsela Lite account to start your 45-day free trial and get access to the content and skill-building scaffolds you need to teach students how to identify key details.
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