Teaching Upper Elementary Students to Decipher the Theme of a Story

Teaching upper elementary students how to infer the theme(s) of a book or a story can be daunting. This is a challenging topic for many students because it involves higher-level thinking skills. Providing scaffolds, like guiding questions and clue patterns, can be helpful for many students. Today, I am going to provide some tips that will hopefully help you teach students to decipher the theme. 

Tip #1: Connect this topic to a plot diagram.

Explain that authors leave clues that point toward the theme throughout the story. It is the job of the reader to recognize these clues when they are presented. If you have already introduced your students to plot diagrams, then showing your students a diagram like this can be beneficial.

Tip #2: Teach students clue patterns and guiding questions.

It's one thing to know that clues exist throughout the story, but it's another thing to recognize these clues while reading. Therefore, it is a good idea to teach students common patterns that authors use when they are dropping hints about their story's theme. Here are four patterns that occur frequently in books written for upper elementary readers. Below each type of clue, you will see a question that will guide your students toward deciphering the theme.

(The images shown above were taken from my "Themes in Reading" PowerPoint lesson.)

Tip #3: Read aloud a picture book and MODEL the process of deciphering the theme.

Any time I have the opportunity to model a reading skill by using a picture book, I jump at the opportunity! I love to integrate a good picture book into my lessons. If you are a fellow fan of using picture books to model reading skills (or you think you want to try it!), I invite you to download this book companion worksheet that I created to help students learn how to interpret the theme of a story. (Just click on the image to download it for free!)

Picture books written by Patricia Polacco are perfect for a reading lesson where you are modeling for students how to infer the theme. Below, you will see how you and your students might fill out this sheet after reading My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother to them.

If you are interested in having your students further explore the topics presented in this blog post, you should check out my brand-new "Themes in Reading PowerPoint"! I am super excited about this PowerPoint, as it has been percolating in the back of my mind for several years, and I finally buckled down and created it!

Have a great day!

Deb

Pin for later:

Leave a Comment 4th grade, 5th grade, reading, Theme