You know every teacher has his/her list.. The list of concepts and skills that we LOVE to teach and those that we LOATH to teach. Some that I LOATH are measurement in math.. Ugh! One that I LOVE teaching theme in reading 🙂 I think it’s something that I can connect to so easily, in so many ways. This why I have fun and enjoy breaking it down for my students.
But, if you’re one who teaches theme, you know that that 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. I’ve put together an entire list of tricks and tips that I know are going to help YOU help your students understand theme even better!
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Theme is what I call a ‘juggling’ skill. Students have to completely understand a wide variety of skills before they can successfully identify the them. These skills include summarizing, characters, plot, and even making inferences.
When teaching theme, make sure students understand and can define theme. I always include these pieces of information too: Theme MUST be inferred. There can be more than one theme in a text. And theme isn’t specific to just ONE story. Allowing students to know this helps them grasp the concept of theme even better!
Theme Tip #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 third 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.
Teaching Theme Tip #2:
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’.Teaching Theme Tip #3:
Looking for some hands on, engaging lessons to get more out of your reading instruction for teaching THEME? I’ve got a FULL theme unit of lesson plans, reading center, assessments, and more – ready for YOU!
Teaching Theme Tip #4:
Teaching Theme Tip #5:
