Analysis of Theme: Identity (Grades 5-6)

• Five literary texts
• 4-6 weeks instruction
• Literary analysis writing

What is this unit about?

As you might have guessed from the title, this unit is about analyzing theme. Through engaging in the unit, students learn to analyze how themes develop over the course of a text, including how they emerge and are shaped and refined by specific details. Students also learn how to write essays about their analyses of themes.

This unit is also about identity. Through the course of this unit, students deepen their understanding about identity and how it is shaped.

In this unit, students will read, write about, and discuss three short stories and two poems to deepen their understanding of the following big questions:

•  What is identity and how is it shaped?
•  How do we identify and analyze themes?
• How do texts vary in their approaches to similar themes?

For their final assessment, students compare and contrast two unit texts in terms of their approaches to a similar theme.

What content will students learn?

Students will expand their knowledge base about:

• how various characters develop in short stories and poems.
• how various authors create identity in short stories and poems.
• how various authors develop themes over the course of texts.
• features of essays that provide analyses of how a theme develops over the course of a text. Features include a statement of a valid theme; an analysis of the development of the theme with well-chosen, relevant, and sufficient evidence; appropriate and varied transitions; an introduction; a conclusion; and a formal style and objective tone.