Inside This Week’s Episode: Many teacher find teaching theme challenging with elementary students. But— it’s likely because we aren’t giving our students a simple formula that they can repeat over and over to help them successfully identify theme. I’ll show you exactly what that formula is in this episode of The Classroom Commute!

Have you been teaching theme wrong?

Maybe. I was. For a long time.

And my students struggled because of it. I’d asked students the classic prompting questions like What did the character learn? or What was the problem that the character was facing? — all good questions. However when we ask our students to take the giant leap from answering those prompts to identifying theme, we lose them.

What they really need is the bridge to get from the prompt to theme. A repeatable formula that breaks the process of finding theme in literature into simple steps.

And - I’ve got that formula for you today! When I started using this theme-finding formula with my students…it WORKED! Like, really worked. Students were able to identify theme and support it using evidence from the text. It was like magic.

I want your students to be able to do the same so I’m sharing all the details on today’s podcast. It’s must-listen episode for any upper elementary reading teacher.

LEarn My Simple Formula to help your students identify theme!

Here’s a Snapshot:

• [01:50] Teachers often struggle to teach theme to students because it is an abstract concept. We often “spoon-feed” our students the theme by asking prompting questions that don’t really get to the heart of what a theme is.

• [03:35] Students often mistake main idea for theme. That’s why it is important for teachers to address this misconception right away. I’ll share about a comparison chart that I have used with students, and come back to often, that will help students to understand the differences between main idea and detail.

• [06:11] One mistake that students, and even some teachers make is that what they consider to be themes, are really topics. Topics like friendship, loyalty, and perseverance are often claimed as themes, however, they don’t go deep enough. I’ll cover how to take these topics and flesh them out into full theme statements using a simple framework that can be used again and again.

Links & Resources Mentioned in the Episode

LINKtivity: Story Mountain

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate (and check out my novel unit companion HERE!)

Grab my FREE Teaching Theme Starter Kit below:

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Transcript