Mini Writing Lesson: Determining a theme

Today's Goal:

You will be able to identify the theme of a story that you recently read.

Reminder:

In this lesson, you will be recalling information from a story of your choosing that you've read in this unit:

• “Safety of Numbers”

What is a theme?

A theme is the universal message in a story, poem, or text.

A theme statement MUST:
1. Be a complete thought or message. They are NEVER just ONE word.
2. They must use words like 'people' to make the message universal. They never use character names or PLOT DETAILS.

Example of a theme statement:

One theme in The Wizard of Oz is that home is more important to people than they often realize.

- complete thought
-uses 'people'
- does not summarize the story or include plot details

1. Did any characters change in the story? how?

2. How was the conflict in the story resolved?

3. Did you notice any interesting literary devices such as metaphors, similes, etc?

4. What are two big ideas in the story?