Describe the central message or theme; Retell a text (Inclusive Big Idea #2)

Reading Literature

Grade 2: English Language Arts

Inclusive Big Idea #2: Describe the central message or theme; Retell a text

Standard: Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral. RL.2.2

• Anchor Text: Use an anchor text, such as Duck for President, by Doreen Cronin, that has a clear sequence of events which address the major theme or lesson to teach this skill. Learn more about accessing grade-level text in this TIP Sheet.
• Writing/Drawing Retellings: Students can write or draw a story by assigning certain sections of the story to different students. Next, compile the parts together to retell the story and focus on how each part contributes in some way to the central message or theme. The written and drawn pieces can be compiled as a class-made big book to highlight different themes.
• Storyboards: Use storyboards to illustrate the major plot points of the story. For example, the teacher or students could stop periodically and draw a pictorial representation and discuss the main plot points. Then, at the completion of the read aloud, the teacher and students can summarize the set of events from the story and discuss how these lead to understanding the theme or central idea.
• Graphic Organizer: Have students use a story map or sequence chain to retell the story. Learn more about graphic organizers in this TIP Sheet.
  • Use pictures instead of words to fill in the key events in the story and put them in the graphic organizer. You can have pictures already cut out or prepared.
  • Use pictures to sequence the beginning, middle, and end of the story. Students could work in partners or on their own.
  • Use pictures to identify the problem and the solution to the story. Give a model example so students understand how this helps them get to the central theme.
  • Have students work in pairs: One student describes the beginning, middle, and end of the story, while the other sequences the pictures.
  • Use cut-up sentence strips to put the story in order.
  • Use a Venn diagram or similar graphic organizer to compare and contrast fables and folktales from diverse cultures with their central themes. Students can match or place word cards or picture cards in the appropriate section of the diagram, representing each story. Then students answer questions about the stories either verbally or by pointing to the correct picture in the graphic organizer.
• Puppet Theater: Using a felt board, create props from a familiar story. Ask students to retell the story by manipulating the various props on the felt board.
  • Have students work in pairs: One student describes the beginning, middle, and end of the story, while the other sequences the puppets.
  • One student can hold up the book and point while the other uses the puppets to describe what is happening, keeping the focus on the central theme.
  • Have sentence starters or cues to help focus the discussion.
• Think Aloud: To model retelling, read aloud a book in front of the class. Then, at the end of the story, demonstrate how to retell the story and find the key details that help determine the central theme as a model for your students. Also, provide pictures from the story and model how to look back in the story and match the picture in order to retell the story.
  • Preview the type of information to look for prior to reading the story. Practice finding key events with a set of short paragraphs or very short stories.
  • Model think-aloud of key events and evidence supporting a theme or central idea from the story.
  • Record any transitional signal words used in the story.
  • Identify pictures that represent the key events (beginning, middle, and end) of a given story.
• GIST: GIST (Generating Interactions between Schemata and Text) is a strategy that asks readers to condense or summarize a text by generating a brief summary in their own words. For simple texts read aloud by the teacher, students can provide the GIST by identifying some of the main events from the story. In longer read aloud texts, the teacher may stop every few pages and ask students to tell the GIST of what was read so far.
• Anchor Chart: To help students track changes in plot, provide a list of transition signal words for reference (e.g., first, next, after, before, last). Tracking details is a way to help determine what a theme may be.
• Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then: Have students capture the main ideas from a story or text by determining the ‘somebody’ (the main character of the story), what the main character ‘wanted’ (which is the inciting incident and starts the movement of the plot), the ‘but’ (the problem that keeps the main character from betting what they ‘wanted’), and ‘so-then’ (is the resolution of the story or the solution of the problem). Make a connection to how this process supports students to find the central theme.

For example, one possible barrier is the amount of information that a student needs to hold in mind.

Ideas to reduce this barrier could include:

• be aware of how much sensory input occurs at once, perhaps offer the option to use headphones
• show examples and provide answers to check along the way
• provide templates or graphic organizers
• allow use of calculators, spell checks, and other tools 

Use these Inclusive Strategies to help reduce barriers.

• Why are Main Idea and Theme important?
  • Whether reading a story, a comic, or a poem, the ability to determine the main idea, theme, and supporting details is a lifelong skill readers use to foster higher level thinking and deeper comprehension.
  • To share their comprehension of a story, text, or topic, students must be able to restate the main idea and other key details to summarize their understanding. Main ideas and details can be explicitly stated in the text while central idea, moral, or theme require various degrees of inference to determine, but must be supported by details from the text.
• What Vocabulary Should I Know and Teach?
  • summary- containing the key points and big ideas
  • main idea- the most important idea in the text
  • details- specific smaller elements that support a larger work
  • key word- essential or significant words related to the text or topic
  • relevant- has significant importance to the topic or text
  • irrelevant- not important or related
  • characters- person/persons in a story
  • setting- place where the story happens
  • plot- sequence of events involving characters in conflict situations
  • point of view- perspective from which the story is told
  • theme- moral or big idea of the story
  • inference- a conclusion or opinion that is formed based on facts or evidence not directly stated in a text
  • context clues- words and sentences within a text that provide additional information and support a reader’s ability to make a conclusion about what happens in a text
• What is Theme?
  • The central and underlying meaning of the story.
  • The big idea the author wants the reader to take away from the text-- the writer’s view of the world or a revelation about human nature.
• What Are Some Common Themes Found in Literature?
  • Acceptance: These stories have characters who respect and accept others’ differences and beliefs.
  • Courage: These stories have brave characters who have the strength to overcome a fear or accept a risk.
  • Perseverance: These stories have characters who never give up, even when facing difficult times.
  • Cooperation: These stories have characters who work together to solve a problem or achieve a goal.
  • Compassion: These stories have characters who want to make those who are suffering feel better.
  • Honesty: These stories have characters who find that it is best to always tell the truth.
  • Kindness/Love: These stories have friendly characters who are generous and considerate of others.
  • Loyalty/Friendship: These stories have characters who trust each other and never turn their backs on their friends.
  • Coming-of-Age: These stories have characters passing through major stages of development/growing up.
  • Family/Belonging: These stories have characters who find similarities with family or friends and use these characteristics to bond.
• How Can You Find the Theme?
  • It is common for stories to have multiple themes. Theme can be stated explicitly or implicitly. For example, fables explicitly state the theme at the end.
  • Unlike the main idea which requires information from an entire text, the theme can often be found at the conclusion of the story.
  • Most often, readers have to infer the theme based on character traits, motivations, actions, emotions, and values. Learn more about making inferences with this TIP Sheet.
  • Some sample questions about theme:
    • What message did you take away from reading this text? Which clues helped you determine this theme?
    • Which passage in the text is most significant? Why?
    • How does the changes the main character undergoes help you determine the message of the book?
    • What affected your interpretation of the theme the most: the plot, the characters, the setting?
• What is Main Idea?
  • The main idea is what the paragraph or story is mostly about. All the sentences are joining together to give the reader a message. You may encourage students to look for main ideas in other media, such as videos or songs.
  • Sometimes the main idea is directly stated within the passage. Other times, it is inferred, which means the reader has to “read between the lines” and figure it out on their own. Learn more about making inferences with this TIP Sheet.
• Why Teach Main Idea?
  • When the main idea is known at the beginning of a text, it alerts the reader to upcoming information and helps them set a purpose for reading. This leads to a greater understanding of the text.
  • It provides the reader with a framework for understanding and recalling the important ideas in the text.
  • Learning how to identify the main idea will help readers remember what they read and improve their comprehension.
• How Do I Teach Main Idea?
  • Begin by identifying the main idea at the sentence level, then practice with a paragraph, and finally with an entire selection.
  • Teach students that main idea is sometimes expressed as a topic sentence usually found in the beginning of the text.
  • Finding the central theme or idea is not limited to text, but can be found in movies, cartoons, plays, and more.
  • Teaching the Main Idea-- Continuum
    1. Identify the key words of a sentence
    2. Identify key words or topic of a paragraph
    3. Identify the topic sentence of a paragraph
    4. Recognize the explicitly stated point of a paragraph
    5. Infer the main idea of a paragraph
    6. Recognize the relationships among ideas in related paragraphs in longer selections
    7. Infer relationships among ideas in related paragraphs in longer selections
    8. Determine main idea or central message of an entire text.
• How Do I Identify Key Words?
  • Mastery of identifying key words at the sentence level is essential in order for students to move on to larger bodies of text.
  • Begin at the sentence level to identify key words that help deepen understanding of the central theme:
    • The small pig was frightened by the big, bad wolf.
    • Who is the sentence about? It’s about a small pig.
    • What about that small pig? or What happens to the small pig? It’s frightened by the wolf.
  • Once mastery at the sentence level is achieved, move on to identifying key words of a paragraph. Model how to highlight important words and discuss their meaning within the paragraph.

Common Student Misconceptions

• Retelling: When retelling a story, information should be presented in the same order in which it happened to ensure students understood the cause and effect relationship for events and other story characteristics.
• Theme: Theme is rarely stated directly in the text. Students must infer theme based on details presented in the text. Learn more about making inferences with this TIP Sheet.
• Theme: Main idea and theme are often confused as being the same. Although both can be related, theme is a broad topic, whereas main idea is more specific. (For example, nature may be the theme of a story, whereas the main idea is “littering is bad”).

Everyday Connections

• Show-and-Tell: Encourage students to think about a story from their life (a fight with a friend on the playground, a time they got a new toy, etc.) or a favorite cartoon, book, play, or comic and tell about the main message or theme. 

First Grade: Describe the central message or theme; Retell a text (RL 2)

Second Grade: Compare and contrast elements of texts (RL 9)

Third Grade: Describe the central message or theme; Summarize a text (RL 2)