Reading and Literature:
GENERAL STANDARD 11: Theme
Students will identify, analyze, and apply knowledge of theme in a literary work and provide evidence from the text to support their understanding.
Understanding and articulating theme is at the heart of the act of reading literature. Identification of theme clarifies the student’s interpretation of the text. Providing evidence from the text to support an understanding of theme is, like a proof in algebra or geometry, the most essential and elegant demonstration of that understanding.
Grade Level
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Learning Standards
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PreK–4
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Grades PreK–2
11.1: Relate themes in works of fiction and nonfiction to personal experience.
For example, students explore the theme,“A true friend helps us when we are in trouble” in poems, pictures, and stories, and compare their own experiences in original art and stories.
Grades 3–4
(Continue to address earlier standard as needed and as it applies to more difficult texts.)
11.2: Identify themes as lessons in folktales, fables, and Greek myths for children.
For example, students read Aesop fables, folktales from several countries, and Greek myths and discuss the lessons the stories demonstrate.
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5–8
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Grades 5–6
(Continue to address earlier standards as needed and as they apply to more difficult texts.)
11.3: Apply knowledge of the concept that theme refers to the main idea and meaning of a selection, whether it is implied or stated.
For example, students explore the theme, “Heroism demands courage and taking risks,” in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and The Adventures of Robin Hood and write paragraphs explaining how each author illustrates this theme in different ways.
Grades 7–8
(Continue to address earlier standards as needed and as they apply to more difficult texts.)
11.4: Analyze and evaluate similar themes across a variety of selections, distinguishing theme from topic.
For example, students explore the theme, “Understanding involves putting yourself in someone else’s shoes,” in interviews with adults, in fiction, and in biographies to identify what real and fictional people have experienced, and report their findings to the class.
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9–10
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(Continue to address earlier standards as needed and as they apply to more difficult texts.)
11.5: Apply knowledge of the concept that the theme or meaning of a selection represents a view or comment on life, and provide support from the text for the identified themes.
For example, students analyze and compare selections from Russell Baker’s Growing Up and Ed McClanahan’s Natural Man, or from Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera and Reynold Price’s Long and Happy Life, as variations on a theme.
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11–12
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(Continue to address earlier standards as needed and as they apply to more difficult texts.)
11.6: Apply knowledge of the concept that a text can contain more than one theme.
11.7: Analyze and compare texts that express a universal theme, and locate support in the text for the identified theme.
For example, students compare Sophocles’ play Antigone and Robert Bolt’s play, Man for All Seasons, or Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, as cross-cultural examples of a similar theme and locate words or passages that support their understanding.
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Sample Grade 4 Integrated Learning Scenario:
Literature Lessons
Learning Standards Taught and Assessed:
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Reading and Literature Strand:
• 8.14 Make judgments about setting, characters, and events and support them with evidence from the text.
• 11.2 Identify themes as lessons in folktales, fables, and Greek myths for children.
Composition Strand:
• 19.12 Write a brief interpretation of a literary text using evidence from the text as support.
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Introduction:
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Students discuss their ideas about being kind and being happy and the relationship between them.
Students read Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe, and, as a class, fill in a chart with information from the story that identifies the consequences for kind and unkind behavior exhibited by each of the four characters. (Learning Standard 8.14)
Then the class answers the question, “How does the author show that being kind helps make a person happy?” (Learning Standard 11.2)
The class and teacher construct a paragraph detailing evidence from the text for their conclusion and develop a list of criteria for a good response paragraph. (Learning Standard 19.12)
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Practice / Assessment:
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Students read a version of “Beauty and the Beast” in which the characters must be kind in order to be happy, filling in the same kind of chart used for Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters. Using the chart, the model, and scoring guide, pairs of students write a response to the same guiding question, “How does the author show that being kind helps make a person happy?” They share their paragraphs and discuss what evidence from the story best supports the theme. (Learning Standards 8.14, 11.2, 19.12)
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Culminating Performance and Evaluation:
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Students read folktales, fables, and myths that contain familiar lessons identified by the teacher. Using the same chart and scoring guide, they write individual in-class responses to the question, “How does the author show that . . . [lesson]?” in one of the stories they have read. (Learning Standards 8.14, 11.2, 19.12)
The teacher evaluates the students’ writing, focusing on the students’ use of evidence in the story to support a theme.
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