5 Engaging Ways to Teach Theme

Theme is one of my favorite concepts to teach, because it is so relevant to the world around us. Each of us lives a story, and each day has lessons to teach. Students often easily connect with this concept, because it is inherent to each fairy tale and fable that we tell to even our youngest children. 

Here are my five favorite ways to teach theme:

1. Use relevant pop culture

I love using pop culture, especially music videos, to introduce reading skills to my students. This has a couple of benefits, but I think that the introductory lesson I do with theme has always been one of my most effective.

To start, I have my students write down that "Theme = The message of a story." I list a couple of potential themes and allow them to do the same at their small groups and then to the whole class.

I explain that we will be watching a music video to determine its theme, and that they should pay attention to the images, rather than the lyrics of the video. I always use this music video, because it has a theme that is relevant for many middle schoolers, some obvious symbolism, and an easy-to-determine theme.

As we watch the video, I periodically stop so that students can discuss the setting, characters, conflict, and changes. At the end, each group presents what they believe to be the theme. We then continue our notes by listing what elements go into determining theme.

2. Get kids working kinesthetically with sorts and task cards

It's not always easy to reach your kinesthetic learners in an English class, so I like to use sorts to scaffold students when they are learning a new skill, both because of the extra support they provide (in the form of options) and because students seem to really enjoy these hands-on types of activities. This free set has students practicing theme with both poetry and fables, and then asks them to read an original short story to independently determine its theme.

When it comes to task cards, I like these ones, from Kirsten's Kaboodle on TPT. If you've never used task cards, they are essentially practice questions that are spread out around the room. Students go to each task card, read the story, and write the correct answer on their sheet. When a student finishes, I will tell the student how many he or she has wrong, but not which ones, so that he or she has to think critically about which tasks they were most uncertain of. I often recommend that students circle or star the questions that give them the most trouble, so they will know to go back to these later. Students who finish early with all of their answers correct become checkers with me (one of the greatest glories of the middle school classroom!).

3. Practice writing and collaboration skills with theme write-arounds

Theme write-arounds are a great, low-pressure way to begin responding to others' ideas and writing using text evidence! In a write-around, all students in a group receive a different story or prompt from each other member of the group, as well as their own unique color of writing utensil. They write a response to the story, prompt, or task, and then pass their paper to the next person in the group. This second person will read the story and response so far, and then may elaborate on, contradict, or validate the previous response (you may want to review polite discussion skills before starting this activity--anything that applies when spoken applies on paper!). This continues until all group members have responded to each story. Here is the one that I've used.

4. Make theme relevant in students' independent reading

In our quest to make readers, we must allow to students to read their own books (read Donalyn Miller's wonderful books here and here to learn more about this, or visit her blog). Guiding students to look for the theme in their current reading may mean actually identifying the theme, if they are almost finished with their novel, or it may mean predicting what the theme will be, based on the characters, setting, and conflict encountered so far. They can share their learning through a journal entry, blog post, artistic representation, presentation, or any medium that you deem appropriate.

5. Achieve mastery by letting students create their own thematic stories!

 This task is the most difficult, and the most fun of the five. Once students really seem to have a grasp on theme, allow them to write their own stories by picking a theme (you can let students pick from a list of teacher-created themes, or allow students to create one of their own. I use something like this to get them started). This allows students to see how the theme can shape an entire story. (Bonus: It's also a great place to practice "show, don't tell" skills as well!)

Happy learning!

Cheers,