Reading Comprehension

Theme Identification Program

Appropriate Grade Level: Variety of grade levels
Procedures/Steps:
The theme identification program is an educational strategy used to help students with severe learning disabilities acquire high-order comprehension skills. The teacher is a guide in the learning process, guiding these students with delayed knowledge-bases in learning to relate and comprehend texts. The program is used as follows:
There are a series of 12 lessons, each centered on a single story. The lesson is comprised of prereading, reading, discussion of story information, identification of theme and relevance, application to real-live experience, activity, and review.
  • Prereading: Discuss possible themes, value of understanding themes, background for the story, relevance to personal experience, etc… Use scaffolding and teacher-modeling to encourage participation and understanding
  • Reading: Teacher reads the story aloud while students follow along. At three points in the reading the teacher will ask questions which encourage prior knowledge use and associations, predictions, and recounting of story events.
  • Discussion: Discuss the main story points directly after reading, as students with severe learning disabilities may have difficulty identifying these points. Then the teacher uses questioning to organize important story components and to expose the theme. Internalization of the questions is encouraged through repeating back the question or having the student ask the questions to the class. Students are encouraged through the questioning to make judgments about good and bad, to identify a theme.
  • Theme-identification: Students are asked to identify the theme in a standard format, as a “should” statement. Themes start as “(the main character) learned that he (she) should (not)…” (Billy learned that he should not bully other people) and move on to “we statements” : “We should not bully other people,” “We should not steal,” “We should be kind to others,” etc… The third tier of theme identification is to state it as “The theme of the story is that people should not bully one another.” These can be accomplished through teacher-modeling.
  • Application: Teachers encourage the asking of three questions: “Can you name someone who should…? When is it important for (that someone) to…?” and “in what situation will that help?” Some students will have trouble with generalizing so this step is crucial to develop.
  • Activity: Use a multimodal activity to enforce retention of theme. Role-playing, art activities, and music are all ways to enforce these themes. Be creative!!!
  • Review: Encourage the students to go further with their thinking about the topic. Review what was learned.

Comments and/or tips:
This method would be a great way to teach students with emotional and behavioral disorders, as they often have trouble expressing and generalizing. Creativity with stories and lessons will help students to learn to identify and comprehend stories and story themes. Development of units may take time but prove to be worth the effort.
Source:
Wilder, A., Williams, J., 2001. Students with severe learning disabilities can learn higher order comprehension skills. Journal of Educational Psychology, v.93, n.2, 268-278.