 Hi, thanks for joining me for a quick and easy lesson on theme from Dr. Anita Archer. I'm Steph Wannick from ESU 8. Theme can be a tricky thing to teach students. It seems a little bit more ambiguous and harder to figure out for them. The Nebraska State English Language Arts Standards include figuring out theme on standard number 1.6.d. So I think that this lesson will benefit you and your students by giving you that quick, easy structure to use as you figure out theme. So anytime that you're teaching a narrative, you need to go over some story grammar. You're going to talk about the setting and the main characters, the characters problem. You know, how did the character try to resolve that problem and what happened in the end? And those questions seem a little bit easier to answer because usually they're told to the students. It's not always implied. You know, sometimes they are, but they're typically a little bit easier to figure out. But when we ask what's the theme of the story, sometimes students get confused. So we need to teach the word theme. That theme is an underlying message or the big idea of the story. This message could tell more about human nature or life in general. It's maybe a lesson learned. So some examples of theme are that human beings across cultures are very similar. They want the same things, food, shelter, love and friends. Or you might have this example in a story. If you are very selfish, you may not have many friends. Or greedy people often lose more than they gain. For example, they may have lots of money and no friends. Or you get better by practicing. All examples of theme in stories. So we can use a structure called two questions and two statements to help with theme and help determine that theme. So those two questions are, was what happened good or bad? Why was it good or bad? And then two statements are the main character learned that he or she should and we should. So some learning statements here are we are learning to determine the theme of a narrative. I'm looking for a theme that conveys the big idea or message of the narrative. And this is important because to understand a narrative, we have to determine the theme, the message or the big idea of the story. That's kind of the reason to tell the narrative oftentimes. So we're going to go ahead and look at some examples and determine the theme using the two questions and two statements. And we're going to use a structure that Dr. Archer uses for scaffolding called I do it, we do it, you do it. So on the I do it, this is a chance for the teacher to do a lot of modeling. Students are listening now, they're having the teacher do it as an example. And when you do this, you want to do a lot of thinking aloud and telling them your thought process. Before we go further, I'm going to have you pause this video and go ahead and read this passage when you're ready to continue hit play. Alright, so let's apply the two questions and two statements structure to the previous passage. Two questions was what happened good or bad? Well, I think what happened was good because the girls became friends. So, and then why was that good or bad? Well, when Sarah got to know Layla, she learned that they have a lot in common and they worked well together. I also kind of know it was good because I had this good feeling at the end. Two statements, the main character learned that he or she should. She should get to know people even when they appear different. That person may end up being a good friend. And we should in our own lives, this is a time for us to tell what we do, what lesson we can learn. Well, that we should get to know people even when they appear different. That person may end up being a good friend. Alright, so it helped us get to the theme in those four easy steps. Now we're going to do a we do it or a time for you to work along with your students or help them along. This is a good scaffold. So instead of just having an example and then they have to go do it on their own, you're working through it together. This story is Cassie and her cookies. I'm going to have you again pause your video and read the passage. When you're ready, push play. Now again, we can apply the structure of two questions and two statements. Was what happened in this story good or bad? Now again, we're doing a we do it this time. So we want to get some answers from our students. So really go ahead and call on students to answer these questions and help them along with them. So we would determine that what happened in this story was bad. And then we would start asking why questions of our group and let them add a lot of input here. Well, Cassie didn't share the cookies and as a result, the other girls didn't want to be her friend. Now the two statements, the main character learned that she should share with her friends, right? And that we should share with our friends also. So that there we got to the theme we should share with friends. Whoa, I skipped ahead one too many. Okay, so now in our lesson, it's time for you do it and some reading experts even call this step a y'all do it. So what they're going to do in a y'all do it is work with a partner. So they get some time before they're set loose on their own to do something. They get to practice doing it with a friend. So go ahead and read this story, push pause and push play when you're ready to go on. Okay, this time, if we're doing a y'all do it, I would definitely have the students work with a partner and answer to that partner before sharing out to the group. Almost like I think pair share. So what was what happened good or bad here? Well, it was good. And it was kind of good and bad. So you might have varied answers for this particular story. You might talk about why it was good or bad. Danny saved money so that he could buy a bike. Meanwhile, Benny spent his money and didn't have a bike. Those statements might be something like the main character learned that he should save his money so he could buy something that was important. And we should save money so that we can buy things that are important. Okay, now's your opportunity for you do it for kids to test themselves out and say, hey, I've practiced this strategy by having it modeled, working with my teacher, working with a partner and now I'm doing it all by myself. Do I know how to do this on my own? Go ahead and read the story by taking some time to pause your video and push play when you're ready to go on. Again, if we use the two questions and two statements structure, this might be something that students have filled out on their own. Maybe they've written out the answers to these and they've really worked through it on their own. And now they're going to test out and you might share out and say, hey, let's, let's quiz you. Let's see what happened here. Did you get this theme on your own? So was what happened good or bad? Well, it was bad. Why was it good or bad? Lucy failed to take good care of her crayons. As a result, her crayons were ruined. Two statements. The main character learned that she should take care of her things so that they would not be ruined. We should take care of our things so that they will not be ruined. Now, when you teach the strategy to kids, I think that this is something that they can take with them. It's simple enough to have these four or, you know, four steps, two questions, two statements, that they would remember if they were on a standardized test, a state test, something like that, that, you know, they can use the strategy and pull it out of their own reading toolkit to get to the answer of a theme. Also, this is a strategy that can be good for, you know, your smallest preschool kindergarten kids up to your, you know, high school kids too. So our examples today were pretty simple. Whenever you're teaching a new strategy, you might want to teach with that simpler example before going on to more difficult things. But if you are working with high school kids and you think that those are too simple, go ahead and pull some other examples to have them work through. And remember that that scaffolding or that gradual release is what really can help structure this so that they can get a hang of it to do on their own. Thanks so much. I hope that this lesson helps you teach theme to your students.