Book Smarts

Build understanding of theme with an activity designed for The Cay and the Common Core. Small groups or pairs use graphic organizers to determine themes, find and record related details from the text, and formulate theme statements. In...

If your language arts learners have a hard time determining the universal theme of a written work, use a straightforward activity to help them find it. After reviewing a list of common themes, kids note the title, character, plot, point...

Trying to find the theme of a story can freeze the hearts of class members. But here's a resource that provides new hope for learners. Disney's Frozen and Episode IV of the Star Wars series are featured in a presentation that models for...

What's theme, and can texts of every length have one? Explore the themes of fives short reading passages with your middle school class. Encourage them to highlight specific places in the text where they recognized the theme. 

There's nothing like a good theme! After reviewing the story of Cronus, learners participate in a mini lesson about theme by pulling papers from an envelope and identifying the writing on it as either a topic or a theme. Readers then...

What is theme, and how can you find themes in literary works? These and other questions are answered by a colorful and engaging presentation that not only defines the term but also provides easy to understand examples. The slides...

Colorful contemporary images contained in a PowerPoint presentation will capture the attention of class members and model for them the how to distinguish between the subject and the theme of a work. A great want to introduce this...

What is theme? How do you figure out the theme of a story? How is the theme developed? How is the theme expressed? These and other questions are answered by a presentation that not only defines the term but also provides easy to...

So many themes are expertly woven through Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. On the first page, scholars will read five themes, selecting an incident and a quote to highlight that theme. On page two, they use chapters 29-31 to...

Identifying the theme of a piece is crucial to understanding. Using the play Romeo and Juliet as an example, the concept of theme is explored in a video of a classroom lecture.