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11 Essential Tips for Teaching Theme in Language Arts

Plus, 5 mini-lessons on theme and ways to assess students’ understanding.

When fourth grade students in Becca Morris’s class start listening to R.J. Palacio’s Wonder,
she looks forward to the discussion it will inspire, with questions like What does it mean to
be a true friend?, What’s the role of the bystander in bullying situations?, and Can
we tell what a person is like just by looking at them? anchoring the conversation. It is
conversations like these that facilitate teaching theme and can turn reading a book into a life-
changing experience for young learners.
“Studying themes like trust, integrity, and honesty,” says Rachel Claff, editorial director for the
Great Books Foundation, “builds thoughtful world citizens and friends, the kinds of thinkers
you want to have in your classroom.”

Each time students read, they’re entering into a conversation with the author about what
matters, says Jeffrey Wilhelm, distinguished professor at Boise State University and author
of Fresh Takes on Teaching Literary Elements. At the core of that conversation, however,
is comprehension. To fully explore theme, students must understand what they read and then
extract ideas from the text. “You can’t think with ideas unless you understand them,” says
Wilhelm.
Of course, the connection between comprehension and theme is obvious to anyone who’s
ever led a conversation about Animal Farm or The Giver, for example. Getting students to
go beyond the obvious and use their higher-order thinking can be a challenge. When you get
to the other side, however, it’s worth it.
“A good theme brings relevance to a unit,” says Laura Robb, reading specialist and author
of Differentiating Reading Instruction. “It is a rich way of engaging and motivating
students.”
Here are 11 teaching theme tips to help your students understand themes while you read.

1. Meet your students where they are.

Plan reading and discussion around question that your students are already grappling with,
from What does it mean to be a good friend? to What is heroism? When you connect
your literature themes to character development and what’s going on in students’ lives, your
discussions will hopefully resonate deeply with your students. One goal with teaching theme,
explains Jodi Libretti of the the Great Books Foundation, is to encourage students “not only to
think about ways that they can live, but the type of person they want to become.”
2. Start with concrete details.

Before they can identify and work with the theme of a story, your students need to have a
strong grasp of the details: setting, character, plot. When they work with theme, they have to
synthesize all that information into an overarching message. Use anchor charts to outline
the elements of the story or give students a graphic organizer to follow.
3. Clarify the difference between theme and main idea.

Many students have difficulty differentiating between the main idea and the theme. The theme
is the underlying message that the author wants to convey, whereas the main idea is what the
story is mostly about. Teach these concepts separately and together. You might practice
identifying themes and main ideas using Disney films or the stories your students read last
year in order to have a common reference point. After you review as a class, give students a
list of themes and main ideas and challenge them to work in pairs to create matches.

4. Scaffold the learning.

Theme is a difficult concept to grasp. Unlike the concreteness of setting or plot, theme is
subtle and subjective. Move from simpler to more complex class assignments to help your
students deepen their understanding. Humanities teachers Sara Kaviar and Megan O’Keefe,
of the Wildwood School in Los Angeles, invite their students to work in groups to identify the
theme of a fairy tale. Next, they change the ending to the tale in different ways and work
together to identify how the new ending affects the theme. Finally, students write their own
plots to match a given theme. Watch a video of their how they approach teaching
theme here.
5. Use essential questions.

Essential questions are open-ended, thought-provoking, and important in helping students

develop their understanding of the theme. Questions like Why do people behave
honestly? and What makes a good friend? are ones that you can return to throughout the
year to analyze how students answer. See how their answers change as you read different
authors’ takes on the subject. For more on essential questions, don’t miss this article: The
Text Says What? Intro to Text-Dependent Questions.
6. Ask story-specific questions, too.

Specific, targeted questions help focus students on the text. “Asking ‘what is the
theme?’ sometimes strands students because it’s too general,” says Claff. On the other hand,
asking questions that are more explicit, like “Where does friendship play an important part in
this story?” can be too leading. Instead, ask questions that draw from the text and require
evidence to support theme. For example, if you’re reading Tuck Everlasting you might
ask, “Should Winnie drink the immortality water?”
7. Approach theme from different directions.

Be ready to phrase questions about theme a few different ways because you never know
which question(s) will resonate with students. Some questions that will encourage thinking
about theme are: What did the author want us to think about? What idea stays with
you? What will you remember about the story a year from now?
8. Accept a range of answers.

Of course, for many texts, there are often multiple themes and more than one way to express
them. Be flexible when accepting students’ answers to theme-based questions. Students will
often be grappling with concepts they can’t fully own. For example, if a student says the
theme of Tuck Everlasting is living forever is a bad idea, you can work with the class to find
different ways to express this thought. You might say, “Okay, what are some other ways we
can say that?” Guide students toward the theme rather than requiring one right answer, which
can turn the discussion into a game of guess the teacher’s thoughts.
9. Get away from the obvious.

It’s easy to tease out the theme from some stories (think: Aesop’s The Ant and the
Grasshopper). Challenge students with stories that don’t follow a typical pattern. For
example, in the Great Books unit on honesty, students read about characters who begin each
story by being dishonest. By starting with a character who’s lying, students explore deeper
issues of honesty from the start. The careful use of stories, says Claff, opens up issues for
students in an interesting, real-world way.
10. Connect your discussions to other subject areas.

Do you see examples in social studies or current events that connect to your theme? Start a
collection or bulletin board around your current literature theme. Students can add examples
from pop culture, history, or other reading. Help students connect the theme to their own lives
by assigning take-home activities that build personal experiences around each theme. When
students study kindness in Great Books, they perform a random act of kindness. And when
third graders study gratitude, they give an anonymous gift so they can experience what it’s
like to not receive a thank you.

11. Provide a range of reading options.

To engage students at varying reading levels, provide a selection of books on one theme.
When Robb teaches about obstacles, she fills her classroom library with biographies so
students can read about how different historical figures have overcome challenges in their
lives. Even when each student is reading something different, he or she is still engaging with
the theme in conferences and writing. One way to introduce choice is to have a read-aloud
anchor text for all students, with a variety of stories to choose from for independent reading.
In conferences, ask students to relate and connect their independent reading to the read
aloud.

Teaching theme gets at the heart of what we want for students—authentic, meaningful, and
memorable experiences with text. Jeff Wilhelm may have put it best, “If you can read for
theme, you can participate in a democracy.”
5 mini-lessons on theme
Use these quick mini-lessons for teaching theme and about how authors and artists extract a
big idea:

1. Use inspirational quotes.

Read inspirational words to define a theme and brainstorm stories, movies, or real-life events
in which you see this theme played out.

2. View compelling art.

Make art a springboard to discuss themes and how they’re interpreted. For example, Edvard
Munch’s The Scream can springboard a discussion about the theme of fear and uncertainty.
3. Listen to songs.

Songs can lend themselves to a discussion of how artists communicate larger messages
through lyrics. For instance, Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” lends itself to a
discussion of independence.

4. Pull out the oldies but goodies.

Fairy tales are quick hits in teaching theme—like pulling the theme of envy from Snow
White.
5. Judge some books by their cover.

Post the covers of books you have read and ask students to discuss whether or not the theme
is evident on the cover.

6 ways to assess theme

As the year progresses, you’ll want to know if teaching theme paid off and if students are able
to identify theme independently. Here are six suggestions for finding out if your students are
“getting it.”

1. Use annotation.

Have students annotate a text with details, quotes, and other “golden lines” that highlight the
theme. Download our free teacher and student infographic posters on annotation.

2. Tweet the theme.

Laura Robb loves Twitter’s concise format. Have students sum up the theme in 280 or fewer
characters.
3. Monitor reader responses.

Writing responses to the essential question from the start through finish of a unit will help you
see how students develop their ideas.

4. Reflect.

Have students make a connection through writing and discussion on what the theme means
to them personally and how their understanding of the theme has changed based on their
reading.

5. Look for additional themes.

Many stories have more than just one theme—sometimes you just have to dig a little. Using a
story that students are familiar with, have them identify and support a theme that’s different
than the one you’ve already studied. For example, in the story Oliver Button, students may
come up with themes of bullying, gender roles, and determination.

6. Listen for theme.

In reading conferences with students, train yourself to listen for specific details and
examples about theme. The more students are understanding, the better they’ll be at
answering questions like What does the author want you to remember?