Your name: Steven Weisman

General Information
Grade level of the lesson: 4th
Lesson topic: Reading
Estimated time length of lesson: 50 min.
Home languages present: English
EL level of students Expanding

Materials and/or Technology

List all the special materials you’ll need for the lesson.
Tv, Laptop, Reading Stories - An Honest Mistake, Sink or Swim, The Challenge Game

Concept(s)
State the “big idea” that all students will acquire or develop.
Students will learn about the theme of a story and how to identify it.

Alignment with Standards

RL 4.2 Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text; summarize the
text.

ELD 4.B.6 Reading closely literary and informational texts and viewing multimedia to determine
how meaning is conveyed explicitly and implicitly through language

Objectives

Students will be able to infer the theme from selected texts.

Assessment

Students will be assessed by writing down the theme of the story in their small reading groups.
They will do an exit-ticket at the end of the lesson on identifying the theme. I will also be walking
around monitoring their conversations with their small groups. They will finally identify the
themes present in our novel study which will be wrapping up after this lesson.

Vocabulary/Literacy Skills
All 4 literacy skills will be present. They will have to listen to a video to identify the theme and
write it down. They will have to read short stories and discuss with their small groups about the
theme.

Vocab
Theme - the moral, message, or lesson of a given work

A. Focus/Motivation (Open) 10 min.

I will start by sharing this clip from Lilo & Stitch. I will model finding the theme of ‘people can
surprise you’ by discussing what Stitch has been like for most of the movie. I will then ask the
students what another theme is by asking prompting questions towards what Stitch actually
says leading them to realize it discusses the theme of families.

B. Development (Body) 35 min.

Students will be split into 4 groups of 3 students based on their reading level. They will read the
passage and discuss the theme with their groups. They’ll try to come up with themes on their
own. They can draw their theme as a picture, right it down, or do a quick oral presentation on
their findings. If they need help finding the theme, I’ll have a list of possible themes from the text
that they can choose from.

I’ll be walking around monitoring the groups as they read and then discuss the possible themes
of their reading passage.

C. Closure (Close) 5 min.

Students will do an exit-ticket activity where they find the theme from this clip from Finding
Nemo about trust.