Teaching Theme With Sorts

My students were REALLY struggling with theme.  No matter how I taught it, when I asked them to name a theme of the story, they would either rattle off the plot or give me a general theme with no evidence from the text.  Frustrating!  Here is how I finally got them to understand.


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I made a list of books we had read this year as a class, along with a list of common themes in literature.

I gave groups of 4 students these lists and had them cut them out.

I asked them to sort the themes with each of the titles we had read.

At first, they tried to place certain themes under certain titles, but they quickly realized that some themes fit multiple texts.  They decided to talk about one title at a time.

Here is one group's sort for Harry Potter.

And another sort for Number the Stars.

They posted their finished sorts to SeeSaw and were able to check out work from other groups and to comment as well.

And... just because I am so proud of my kiddos and their hard work... here is a little video of them in action.  (They love seeing their work on YouTube)!