Theme Vs. Lesson – Part Two

Part Two looked pretty similar to Part One. 🙂

We looked at a familiar read-aloud, but this time in a whole group (instead of parallel groups).

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I thought our discussion about theme would take a little longer, but they all agreed (almost immediately) that acceptance was the main theme of the story. We spent a little more time talking about the lesson (message from the author).We came up with several!

This is a screen capture of my flipchart. You have no idea how bad the handwritten parts are bothering me!!

In the end I had the kids choose to write about either the theme or one of the lessons. I emphasized that they had to be able to defend their choice with evidence from the text. I was really surprised when almost all of them chose to write about the lesson.

I revised the anchor chart just a little – you’ll want to go back and re-download the TpT freebie if you’ve already gotten it. I’m also including a blank page so you (or your students) can use it with your own titles.

Here are a few student work samples from both days. They made my heart happy. 🙂 If you have classroom favorites with strong themes and lessons (to use instead of the titles I used), you could use work samples below as anchor papers.

Emilio cracks me up – “No wonder he’s cranky!” 🙂

“They might be one of the meanest and scariest people on the outside and be one of the nicest prettiest people on the inside.” – Love that girl!

I’m sorry it took so long for me to update this post! I hope it’s something you can use! 🙂

Click here to redownload the printables for this lesson.