Theme and Character Change

One of the highlights of my job is collaborating with teachers on my campus. Collaboration is easy, you just have to start small! There are so many things that you can collaborate with the teachers about and have co-teaching happen in your school library.

While ELA is not the only subject that librarians can collaborate about, it seems to be the most popular. I am always collaborating and planning with the ELA teachers. One great lesson we did recently was over theme and character change.

I created a template in Google Draw and added it to Google Classroom. Each student had their own copy, and filled in how the character changed throughout the story.

The next week, we discussed theme! I wanted to make it fun and let the kids move around. There is so much more room to move around in the library than in the classroom. The teacher used an app called Chawzi, which groups students. 4 - 6 students put their fingers on the iPad and a colored dot comes up under their finger. This lets them know which group they are in.

Each group received a folder with their mission. The mission was to identify the theme in a story using clues.

Inside each folder was a set of clues to look for, as well as a list of common themes found in literature. Students then had to search the library for their assigned story, and start hunting for the theme.

The students had loads of fun, and learned a lot about finding theme.