The Brown Bag Teacher

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Reviewing Theme with Frozen’s “Let it Go”

Happy day, friends! Reviewing before our BIG test, I was excited to pull from something my kids are loving right now – GoNoodle and Frozen! With all kinds of testing right now (scrimmage, MAP, Iowa, KPREP, Common Assessments) brain breaks have been a saving grace. I was on GoNoodle looking for our next break and it hit me – use “Let it Go” to practice/review theme!

It was a fun and engaging lesson for my friends, and a perfect one-day review of theme. We started the lesson making the connection that songs are just poems put to music (written in stanzas, literacy elements, white space, theme, etc.), and after reading the lyrics or poem, we listened/lip synced/jammed to “Let it Go.”

With the shoulder partner, students were given 4 minutes to summarize and analyze the poem with a partner. What is the poem about? Do you see any figurative language? Is there a rhyme scheme? Is the poem actually about a snowstorm or does the snowstorm stand for something? I kept this slide up on the SMART Board to keep students focused as they worked.
After as a class discussion, I asked students to determine the theme of the poem using details from the text. They worked individually and recorded their theme on the log (here). After students had the opportunity to write about and provide evidence for their theme, we listed all the themes that could be taken from the poem (the only ‘rule’ was that their had to be evidence from the poem to support a theme before it went on our class chart).
Then, working with a partner, I wanted students to develop a multiple choice question. Provide 4 themes (1 correct, 3 in the ballpark but not quite there), and be ready to quiz another group. Why did I have my kids create their own multiple choice question? I wanted to truly gauge understanding of theme and I want to see their reasoning. Also, as long as you can support it, there can be multiple themes for any piece of literature, so I added a could/could not in the question. Teams had to circle one of the two options which sets the foundation for their question-making – bumping up the task for several groups!
After teams created their multiple choice questions, we did 2 or 3 rounds of Stand Up, Hand Up, Pair to test out our questions and tweak theme until they were ‘just right.’ When students had perfected their questions, they answered the other questions about the poem as an exit slip, and then, self-assessed.

Overall, it was a very simple lesson, but a fantastic review. We were able to review the elements of poetry, the idea that poems can have more than one theme, ways to support our theme using the text, and had a great time doing it! 🙂 You may grab the materials I used here or clicking below! When you copy it, you’ll just need to add it the lyrics to “Let it Go” (it’s a copyright infringement for me to share them with you, but they are easily Google-able. 😉

Happy day!

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Comments

  1. I love this idea. I was wondering what you had the students do when on your document it said "Determine which of the following themes…." Did you write in themes or did the students write them in.

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  6. This is awesome!! I use music to teach theme often…we like to start with the "Good Luck Charlie" theme song…all the kids know the show and they can directly relate the lyrics to the different episodes of the show. Then we listen to other TV show theme songs (ones they aren't so familiar with) and try to guess what the shows might be about. It is a great way to introduce theme and keep them engaged…I am keeping Frozen in my back pocket for a quick uh-oh I need to fill time with something meaningful moment (which seems to happen OFTEN with the crazy end of year schedules!!!) THANKS!!!!!

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  9. What perfect timing! This lesson will come directly after a few poetry & figurative language lessons. Since we haven't done theme this year, I will probably have to do some directing teaching on it before we can do the "theme" part. Thanks!

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