If you are anything like me, the first question I generally ask students after we finish reading a text is, ‘what was the theme?’ I find that students need some support at the middle/high school level with crafting a great theme statement as they tend to want to identify the theme topic, instead of the message that goes with that topic. They might suggest that the theme of To Kill a Mockingbird is social injustice, but what I am looking for is that full sentence message about social injustice.
Where my students really struggled, however, was in the analysis of that theme statement. The found it very difficult to trace the development of the theme over the course of a text. Discussing how the author developed that theme stumped many of my students. They searched endlessly and haphazardly to find meaningful evidence from the text. It was through their challenges that my approach to teaching theme changed. Instead of finishing the text and then asking this question, I began asking this question before we even started reading.
I wanted my students to collaborate and participate in meaningful discussions over the very elements that proved to be a struggle – tracking and tracing the development of the theme topic as well as finding meaningful evidence. So, I created the Topic Tracker Team Time. This group would get together several times throughout the course of a text to discuss a theme topic and work together to track/trace its development.
I start by teaching students about theme and theme statements. Then, I introduce the Topic Tracker Team activity. For a whole class novel, or literature circle options that focus on a particular theme, I will share several of the theme topics suggested in the text. For example, when I teach this with To Kill a Mockingbird, I give them the theme topic of social justice/injustice.
I ask students to place post-its in the text where they notice a connection to that theme topic. Then, as groups meet, they will work together to discuss how the theme is being developed through the characters, setting, and plot elements. Then, together as a group, students select the best passages from that part of the text to represent that theme topic. I created a group Topic Tracker graphic organizer for my students where they can record this evidence and their reflections from the meeting.
At the end of the novel, students work together to build that theme statement based on the evidence selected. Finally, students are ready to write a literary analysis paragraph or essay based on that theme statement. They practice selecting meaningful evidence to support an inference and explaining their thinking about the development of a theme in great detail.
Click here to learn more about my complete literary analysis unit and grab this topic tracker for yourself!
Sometimes, I ask my literature circle groups to focus one on element- in this case, theme. I will do this if we are all reading the same whole class novel such as To Kill a Mockingbird. Even though every group is reading the same text, I still like to approach this with the literature circle format to encourage collaboration and meaningful discussions. For more information on my literature circles unit, which includes this option as well as a more general literature circle option- click here!
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