How to Help Your Students Understand Theme

This post originally appeared on the blog Adventures of Room 129.

You know every teacher has his or her list. The list of concepts and skills that we LOVE to teach and those that we LOATHE to teach. Some that I LOATHE are measurement in math like capacity. Ugh! One that I LOVE to teach is Theme in reading 🙂 I think it’s something that I can connect to so easily in so many ways which is why I have fun and enjoy breaking it down for my students. But, if you’re one who teaches theme, you know that it is definitely not the case for all of your students. This can be an extremely challenging concept. Why? Because it is an abstract one. The theme isn’t something they can go back to the text and point to. It’s a type of inference, per se. Students need to be able to truly understand the entire plot of the story as well as the depth of the character to be able to identify a strong theme in a story.

So I did a lot of reflecting from these past few weeks as I’ve been teaching theme (yay!) to my 3rd graders on what I did to really help them understand it. I’ve come up with five tips that I think might help you, too. 🙂

1. Vocabulary needs to be taught first. It won’t matter how much of the plot or how well they know the characters. If they don’t have the vocabulary of the theme ‘words’, then they won’t have a chance to identify the theme. Some of the main themes we teach in our building are: perseverance, cooperation, honesty, responsibility, acceptance, kindness, friendship, greed, and contentment. There are many more to be added to that list. But look at those words! Those are some pretty hefty words even for 3rd graders! The first thing I do when beginning a unit on theme is teach the students the individual vocabulary words we will be using throughout our unit. You’ll be surprised at how much foundation and understand they actually have of the words; they just need a word added to their meanings. So get out the crayons. One of the best ways I introduce these words is by having them not only write and define them, but also sketch them out. Click on the photo below to download for FREE!

2. The next piece that is crucial in being able to identify the theme of a fictional text is a clear understanding of the plot. They have to know the ins and outs of the story, the beginning, the middle and dare I say it – the end! I love having the students use a variety of graphic organizers or flow charts to help with this process. We do a lot of sketches as well. For example: I’ll be doing the first read of the text and then I’ll stop where I think the beginning of the story has ‘ended’. On their paper, the students will visualize and sketch what they truly think is the most important event so far in the story and then write 2-3 sentences about it underneath. Then the students will pair-share and discuss similarities and differences. We continue this throughout the entire story. Then when we get to the discussion about theme, the students have a solid understand and even some ‘notes’ they have taken to refer back to if needed.

3. It’s all about the characters. They need to understands the characters completely. The who’s, what’s, when’s, where’s, and why’s. In addition, they need to look for the change in the character. A lot of times we’ll use a character trait wall to do this. Basically, I divide my front board into two sections and write Beginning and Ending above each section. As we read, the students think of character traits to describe the main (or other) characters and add their words to the wall – same for the ending. Then we analyze what changes we see in the character(s) – which helps us identify the theme!

4. Another big tip with theme is making sure to connect it to texts and media that they already know. I use a lot of movie references in my theme unit. We watch a lot of clips of old fairytales and fables/folktales, etc. I have a really fun movie Tic-Tac-Toe game that the kids just LOVE playing!

This packet has the tic-tac-toe game plus three other amazing and hands-on games that will just make your kids go crazy for theme! Make it fun, make it engaging, and make it about texts or media they already know – they’ll soak it up!

5. My final tip for teaching theme is talk about it with EVERY text you read. The students can’t just have these few lessons in a week or two and then not hear about it again. It’s like skills such as genre, setting, and problem/solution – you talk about it with every story you read, short or long. Have fun with it by keeping track of all of your stories and their themes.

Hopefully I’ve given you some tips that maybe you hadn’t thought of before. If you have any questions, please let me know! I’d love to hear what you do when teaching theme!

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Hey! I’m Ciera from Adventures of Room 129. I have been a 2nd and 3rd grade teacher for the past eight years and am beginning my first year as a full time instructional coach. I’m happily married to my husband Matt and we have three littles together! Landon & Kennedy are 3 1/2 year old twins, and my youngest Emmitt is 22 months. They are my everything! I’m a huge Notre Dame fan (GO IRISH!) and love to watch movies and memorize Big Bang Theory episodes in my spare time. Teaching isn’t just a job or career to me; it’s who I am. It’s a part of me. When I discovered blogging, I found that I can share this passion with others in such a relaxing way. I’ve been blogging for the last six years at Adventures of Room 129. My blog is a place to go to find advice, ideas, and ways to take your teaching to the next level! Shortly after beginning my blog I took a chance at starting a Teachers Pay Teachers store. I quickly found that both of these experience would soon be life changers. I have met the most amazing people and educators through these collaborations and my experiences have truly outdone themselves. I couldn’t feel more blessed. Please come check out my crazy world! I’m on Instagram at @adventuresofroom129 and Pinterest, too! I’d love to hear from you!

How to Help Your Students Understand Theme

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