Using Pictures to Teach Theme

Theme is hard to teach. It's weird because, I feel like theme was one of the easier things to grasp as a young reader but teaching it seems to be a difficult task.

Theme (in literature) = The lesson or moral of a story.

What it comes down to is asking yourself this, "What did the character learn?"

I make it a point to teach that it could be any character. Often it is the "bad guy" in the story that brings out the theme. Typically a story map is necessary to pull out the theme when we are just getting the hang of it.

Before we start up tomorrow I'm going to review theme, but instead of using text we will use pictures. I will show pictures on the board and we will come up with the lesson or moral from the picture.

Possible Theme: It's important to wear a seat belt.


Possible Themes: Practice hard. Practice makes perfect. Work together. There's a lot!


Possible Themes: It's OK to be different/stand out. Be yourself.


Possible Themes: Be brave. Stand up for yourself.


That last one is cheating a little bit.. but I couldn't find that pic without the words so... cheating it is lol.

Your students will come up with many answers. The idea is to be a little abstract, but to pull out some age old wisdom and morals they've heard before. Enjoy! Let me know how this goes.

Images courtesy of google.com