Thinking Theme

It's about the time of year again where I am really hitting theme hard! We had a mini-lesson today to review what we'd learned previously and add on new thinking.

(As a side note, I usually turn all of my anchor charts into digital copies so I can print them on our poster maker and hang them in the classroom. I can't stand hanging my hand-written posters .... I think they look messy and it drives me nuts!) 

Last week for Read Across America we really sunk our teeth into Dr. Seuss books. As we read, we verbally reviewed theme. The two main books we discussed were Yertle the Turtle and The Sneetches. Today, as we made our chart, we thought about EVIDENCE. Seems like it's the current buzz word in education. Using Dr. Seuss was a great way to use easy books as examples. They really understood the messages without a lot of thought. It was a great way to begin to scaffold their thinking by having them provide specific evidence from the text. 

The main text we've been reading over the last week is the Cinderella Story. So far we've read Cinderella, Yeh Shen, and Cendrillon. We discussed the two main themes from these stories, "always be kind to others" and "good vs. evil". I sent them in pairs to find evidence from the text to illustrate these themes. In this way, I am gradually releasing the responsibility to them, with the end goal being each student doing it independently. 

Need a visual for you class? Click this picture to download.