Finding the Theme

Lesson Goal

Students will learn what a theme is, use the three steps (how the main character changed, the title, important passages) on Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, and write the theme as one sentence about life.

Key Concepts

A theme is the idea about life revealed in a story, and a statement of it is a generalization: it says something true of people in general, with no character names in it. The plot says what happened to the duckling; the theme says what that shows about everyone.

Reasonable themes for this story include that you aren't what others call you, that where you start doesn't decide what you are, and that trouble can make later happiness sweeter. Accept any sentence the story's evidence supports.

Where Students Get Stuck

A student will often retell the plot and call it the theme, or write a one-word topic like acceptance. Ask for a full sentence that would still be true if the duckling were a person. Another slip is a statement that names the characters, like the duckling learns he is a swan, which is the plot again.

Teaching Suggestion

Have the student write the three answers separately before combining them: how the duckling changed, what the title points at, and one line from the story that sounds bigger than its scene. The sentence is built from those three, and he should be able to point at each.

Key Vocabulary

Theme

The idea about life that a story reveals, which you usually have to work out yourself.

Generalization

A statement that takes what happened in one story and says it's true of people in general.

Persecuted

Treated cruelly again and again, the way the farmyard treated the duckling.

Disposition

A person's or an animal's natural character, such as being gentle or bad-tempered.