Teaching Theme the Metacognitive Way

Broken down into the cognitive steps, students can determine theme with the support of modelling and collaboration. This video shows the strategy for introducing the concept (quick soapbox moment: even though kids in 8th grade were exposed WHAT theme is in prior years, I never assume they were taught HOW to figure it out. There are definitely kids in high school who were never taught how to figure it out. In fact, there are a lot of students who have been given the themes by teachers. If we are to prepare our students for STAAR or whatever standardized test is looming over you, they need to be able to determine theme on their own. If we want to foster analytic skills and inferencing skills, we need to ask them to use those skills by forcing them to do the thinking.). After doing this strategy with passing the paper and creating multiple themes, it is simply a matter of reminding students throughout the school year that in order to determine theme you just need to follow these basic steps. 

See what else you can do with the theme created by using research and technology by clicking here!