GOAL:
For students to analyze themes illustrated in the text
ASSIGNED READING:
Chapters 10-12
WRITING PROMPT:
State one theme from the text that you have discussed in class or that you have identified on your own. Describe three or more situations in the story that illustrate the theme.
ONLINE PROMPT:
Use the Student Comment Form to share ideas and questions with your online peers. Check yesterday's Student Comments page to see if there are any comments you want to respond to.
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Review with students that theme is the idea(s) that hold a book together. E. L. Kongisburg tells her readers that this book started as a series of short stories that she realized "were united by a single theme" (inside back cover of Aladdin Newbery paperback edition). Theme is not the subject or topic. Rather, it is the message the author is trying to send. The author and the reader are partners in calling up the "true" meaning of the text (Huck, p. 20).
Introduce/review with students the concept of an explicit theme. This is a theme that the writer states openly and clearly. Implicit themes are not as clear but "are developed through the characters, their actions, and their thoughts as we see them through the story's conflict" (Langer, p. 95).
Tell students that it is the reader's task to discover theme. Good readers put story ideas and events together to come up with an overall message about it (the Big Idea).
Some questions a reader can ask to help discover theme(s):
- What does the story mean to you, in addition to the events and characters it describes?
- What is the author trying to say to you through the protagonist's actions?
- What do you see in the story regardless of what the author may have meant? (Vacca and Vacca, p. 193)
Before students begin their writing assignment, hold a mini brainstorming session on some of the themes that occur in this book. Refer back to the section on themes in the introduction to this unit.
Click to go to Lesson 13.
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