I created the following ELA lesson plan and all the materials for my 5th grade ENL class. The students were struggling with the difference between Theme and Central Idea, so I created this lesson to help them understand the difference between the two. I also wanted to have students focus on determining a theme through tracking of characters.
I created these anchor charts to help students distinguish the difference between Central Idea and Theme. I differentiated by translating into Spanish and Chinese. I also used an image that represented each idea across all materials I created, to help students remember the difference between Theme and Central Idea.
For our activity I combined the anchor charts I created with the HMH anchor charts.
I translated the text for Independent Practice from English into Spanish and Chinese, so that my ELL students could have full access to the text.
I created the graphic organizer for this lesson. I made sure to create Spanish and Chinese versions so that all students in my classroom had access to the tools to help them.
I created this tool kit for each center. The kit includes, small translated Theme and Central Idea anchor charts and the visual arrow from my graphic organizers. English, Spanish, and Chinese versions are included.
As a class we created the t-chart. I provided examples to the class and then they chose a side of the room, left side was Theme, right side was Central Idea. I had students explain why they chose their side of the room and we would discuss whether or not the example was a Theme or Central Idea.
I broke students up into 4 groups based on their iReady data and created differentiated posters for group work. They had to demonstrate the skill of tracking characters to determine theme. Group one had free reign to create what they wanted.
Group 2 was given an outline to follow to help them with their group work. As an extension I had the students identify the Central Idea as well.
Group 3 was given the same poster as Group 2. They finished early and were given the extension to find the Central Idea of the text.
Group 4 was comprised of mostly ELL students. I created a prompted version of the previous 2 posters to help students organize their ideas. I gave them 3 choices of Theme to choose from, to help them determine the Theme of the text.