Lesson Plan 2. Rose Peterson. the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details;

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1 Lesson Plan 2 Rose Peterson Standard: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. (RL ) Learning Goal: Students will be able to find multiple themes from a text and develop them using details from the text. Expectations for Behavior: Students will quietly listen during the children s book activity as well as whenever their peers are sharing. Students will appropriately collaborate with their peers during pair thinking time. Students will be on task during independent work. Assessments: All Summer in a Day theme sheet TRANSITION: As you know, we re working toward a formal literary analysis essay. You ve already got a lot of the building blocks, so we re going to start putting those together. Today, we re going to zero in on theme and how to find themes in text. Themes are really important to literary analysis because they re the building blocks of your argument. You guys have had a lot of experience supporting ideas that have been provided to you with examples from the text, but today we re going to expand that and have you identify themes from texts on your own. 1. Discussion about Theme (5 minutes) a. Let s start off by defining theme so you know what you re looking for in texts. Who can tell me what a theme is? i. Literary critics often ask themselves, What is this text really about? and What is this text trying to teach me about life?

2 ii. Deeper meaning or greater lesson of a text iii. Can be applied to more than just this story; universal b. What are some general themes that you ve noticed in stories that you ve read in the past? i. Hard work pays off in the end. ii. Golden rule iii. True friends stay by your side no matter what. TRANSITION: Awesome start. We re going to explore theme a little more by doing something sort of unusual: reading children s books. Picture books are awesome for noticing things about literature because they re usually more simple and shorter than short stories or novels. However, that doesn t make them any less significant. Picture books have a lot of themes hidden in them. 2. Read The Rainbow Fish (10 minutes) a. How many of you guys read The Rainbow Fish when you were little? Isn t it a great book? Sometimes reading books when you re older can give you a different perspective on them. b. Read the story out loud. c. What are some themes you guys can pick out from this story? Raise your hand when you think of one. Remember, one story can have lots and lots of themes; there isn t just one right answer.

3 TRANSITION: That was a great theme warm-up for you guys. Now, you re going to practice finding themes on a bit of a bigger scale using All Summer in a Day, the story you read yesterday. 3. Brainstorming Themes (5 minutes) a. Can someone give us a brief summary of All Summer in a Day? b. You re going to turn to your partner across the aisle and find some themes from All Summer in a Day. I m going to give you a few minutes to come up with as many themes as you can. Remember that there are lots of themes, but they have to be able to be supported by the text, so don t go too wild. After you have a few minutes to brainstorm, we ll share a couple of our themes. c. Verbally share themes from the story TRANSITION: Now you re going to take one of these themes and really go in-depth with it. 4. Writing Long (10 minutes) a. You ll be writing about one of the themes we just listed. You will want to choose a theme that is personally important to you. That s something you ll want to remember when you re writing your literary analysis essay, too. It s a lot easier to write an essay when you are really interested in or passionate about the theme you are writing about. b. So, you will choose one theme one you wrote down when you were brainstorming with a partner or one that another group shared that seemed interesting to you and you re going to write long about it.

4 c. It can be helpful to get your thoughts down on paper because that helps you figure out what you re actually thinking. Ask yourself, How do I say more about this? This will expand your thinking and grow your ideas. Think about the other characters and how they might support this theme or how they might be affected by it. d. This is good practice for what you will be doing on a larger scale with your literary analysis essay, so you ll want to take advantage of the opportunity to practice before your major essay. None of what you write is set in stone, and when you do this with your literary analysis essay, you will pare down whatever you write long into some short, concise points. However, to get to those clear points, sometimes you have to explore what you re really thinking. e. You have about 10 minutes to explore a theme of your choice. Use this time to work independently. If you really invest in this time, I think you ll be surprised how it will help you with your essay writing in the future. Raise your hand if you have any questions, and I will come around to help you. TRANSITION: Now you guys should have a better idea of what your brainstorming for your literary analysis essay will look like. Thank you for your hard work. Please pass your papers to the front of the row before you head out.

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