Common Core Standards

Grade 7

Reading RL.7.2

Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary of the text.

This is another standard that is smack dab between the "let's introduce the idea of theme" standard of fifth and sixth grades and the "now you should be able to analyze basic themes like a pro" standard of eighth grade. Basically, students should be able to talk about how a theme shows up throughout a story instead of from a couple scattered scenes (which is what the sixth grade equivalent of this standard asks for). An example of this standard would be asking a seventh grader how the theme of courage is present throughout Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Example 1

Here's a lesson you can use when students are reading The Diary of Anne Frank. You'll also want to have them read selected chapters from Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler's Shadow.

Have students use a graphic organizer to record their ideas and locate support to determine themes in The Diary of Anne Frank. Using the same graphic organizers, they will record their findings about the main ideas from passages of Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler's Shadow. Additional graphic organizers will then be used to record themes from the selected poetry in the unit.

Aligned Resources