1. BW
Grab your new Article of the Week from the black chair on your way in.
Begin reading the article quietly to yourself and making meaningful annotations.
Remember: Annotations are talking back to the text, NOT just highlighting or underlining random things
Asking questions
Making comments
Defining vocabulary words in context
Making connections
Homework:
AoW #2 due Friday 9/11
Vocab Links 2 Test Friday 9/11

2. THEME
What’s THE MEssage?

3. What is THEME?
Theme is a message about life or human nature that an author wants you to understand.
Theme is what the story teaches readers.
Reminding words: Lesson, meaning, moral.
A story can have more than one theme.
You don’t have to agree with the theme to identify it.

4. Theme is NOT Topic
The theme of the story is not the same as its topic.
Topic is what the story is about.
It can be summed up in a word or two.
Examples: Friendship, Love, Fitting In, Change, Identity, Bravery, Family, etc.
Theme is the message about the topic and is at least one complete sentence.

5. Topic and Theme
Literature deals with complex topics like love and death.
These kinds of topics can have many types of themes.
Each of us have a different point of view because we have different families, different religions, have had different experiences, and have lived in different places.
Authors have different points of view as well.
Two authors might write about the same topic but have completely different opinions or ideas about it.
They could write about the same thing, but come up with a different theme.

6. How do we know what the theme is?
The theme can be directly stated.
The author can tell us the message or the lesson that he or she wants us to learn.
The theme is usually implied.
The author hints at it, or gives us indirect clues, and we have to use those clues to make an inference about what the author wants us to learn or take away from the story.

7. Clues to Theme
TITLE- the title can reflect a story’s topic, its theme, or both.
What does each word in the title mean?
What ideas does the title emphasize?
PLOT- a story’s plot revolves around a conflict that is important to the theme.
What conflicts do the characters face?
How are the conflicts resolved?

8. CHARACTERS- what characters do and learn can reflect a theme.
What are the main characters like? (STEAL: speech, thoughts, effect on others, actions, looks)
How do the characters respond to conflicts?
How do the characters change?
What lessons do the characters learn?
SETTING- the place and time of a story can suggest theme through its effects on the characters and on the events in the story.
How does the setting influence the characters?
How does the setting affect the conflict?
What might the setting represent?

9. The BIG Idea
We might get the theme from the events of the story, but theme is BIGGER than the story.
Think about BIG ideas, not little details from the story.
Themes apply to the real world.
Themes are universal- things that anyone and everyone could learn or talk about.
Remember: Text-to-World connections

10. Let’s Try it!

11. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”
Once there was a mean little boy who lived in a small village. This mean little boy loved to mess with people, so one day he ran up to a sheep herder and shouted, “WOLF! WOLF! A wolf is attacking the town!” The sheep herder grabbed his staff and ran to defend the town, but realized he had been fooled when the boy started pointing and laughing at him. “Ha ha! I made you jump,” said the boy. Then the boy ran up to a farmer and shouted, “WOLF! WOLF! A wolf is attacking the town!” The farmer grabbed his pitchfork and ran to defend the town, but when the boy started pointing and laughing at him, he realized he had been tricked. As the boy went back to his family’s farm laughing about the funny trick he played, he saw a real wolf in his father’s chicken coop. As the wolf ate all of his father’s chickens, the boy screamed over and over again, “WOLF! WOLF! Please help us!” But nobody came to help him.