Theme Lesson Plan: Key Ideas and Details
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This lesson accompanies the BrainPOP Jr. topic Theme, and supports the standard of determining theme and supporting details. Students demonstrate understanding through a variety of projects.
Step 1: ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
Ask students:
- What is your favorite story?
- What challenges do the characters face? What do they learn?
Step 2: BUILD KNOWLEDGE
- Play the Theme movie.
- Click the pause button each time a question appears in Annie’s Notebook and discuss it as a class. Then play to see how Annie answers it.
TIP: The pause button turns red to remind you to pause.
Step 3: APPLY and ASSESS
Students take the Easy Quiz or Hard Quiz, demonstrating what they learned about the topic while applying essential literacy skills.
Step 4: DEEPEN and EXTEND
Students express what they learned about theme while practicing essential literacy skills with one or more of the following activities. Differentiate by assigning ones that meet individual student or grade-level needs.
- Draw About It: Draw characters from a story with a theme about working together to overcome problems.
- Activity: Write and illustrate a story with a theme about bravery.
- Talk About It: Identify the conflict, solution, and of movies you’ve seen.
- Write About It: Identify the main conflict of your favorite story. Explain how it gets solved and determine the story’s theme.
More to Explore
Story Elements Unit: Continue to build understanding around story elements by exploring more BrainPOP Jr. topics.
Teacher Support Resources:
