Themes, What is the Big Idea? Identifying and Teaching Theme
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Themes, What is the Big Idea?
Identifying the theme of a story is a higher order skill and requires the reader to make an inference. The author doesn't tell the reader what the theme is and students are required to infer. This skill is difficult for most students and this skill is frequently evaluated on state reading tests, it is important that students identify themes with reasonable reliability. If we properly teach themes it will be easier for the students.
This lesson includes 14 common theme posters with real pictures.
Love
Cooperation
Determination
Courage
Honesty
Kindness
Acceptance
Ambition
Overcoming Challenges
Loyalty
Believe
Patience
Friendship
Good triumphs Evil
The lesson I created is designed to be a continual lesson that is added to each time you read a book or a child finishes a book in the class. After discussing and agreeing to the theme you will put a picture of the book cover under the theme poster. As the year progresses your bulletin board or display will be growing and hopefully your students will soon grasp the idea of themes and the big idea. I included some covers of books that some of your students may be familiar with and you can use for examples for the lesson.
Also included are covers and writing pages for each theme, this asks the students to write an example of the theme in life. For example, Acceptance is when…
Loyalty is when…
These would be great to write when finishing a book of the same theme. You could make a class booklet of each theme and have in your library ready to read and students would be exposed to these themes even more.
I hope you enjoy this activity/lesson and I hope it will make a lot more sense to your students.
Also included are letters for the bulletin board that says-“Themes, What is the big idea?”
Two different worksheet that students can use after reading a book where they can write the message or theme of the story.
Common core standards that this aligns with.
Happy teaching! Jane
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