Hi Kelly, Although I think theme and author's message are different they can be intertwined and difficult to separate. Do we every really know what the author intended the message to be? The theme is much easier to intuit but sometimes there may be more than one theme and which one did the author intend? We can only speculate about this and these ideas can be a source of rich discussions in the classroom. Lately, I have been talking with my students about author message this way: Why do you think the author wrote this book? More specifically, what is the meaning in this book for this author? At the same time, we make clear that we don't know if this was the meaning for the author. We can only be sure if we read about why the author wrote a particular book straight from the horse's (author's) mouth. I got this idea from Leograndis' book, Launching Writing Workshop Through Photographs (Scholastic). I have found that this kind of questioning gets at a deeper meaning. We then talk about the meaning in the book for us. In some ways, this is a connection of sorts - how do we connect to this book? In her book Leograndis makes a case that this kind of thinking helps children write meaningful pieces. I haven't done this long enough to determine if it does transfer but I can't help but think that it does - we are making these connections explicit and keeping track of them as we go along. Elisa
Elisa Waingort Grade 2 Spanish Bilingual Dalhousie Elementary Calgary, Canada The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt within the heart. —Helen Keller Visit my blog, A Teacher's Ruminations, and post a message. http://waingortgrade2spanishbilingual.blogspot.com/ Perhaps you can help me with a question that has come up with our staff. We were discussing theme (fiction) and at one grade level author's message came up as being used interchangeably with theme. In our conversation that followed some people thought theme was a more global or overarching idea and the author's message was more specific to the lesson the author was teaching through the text. But in realizing there can be multiple themes in books, the confusion continues. I'd love to hear from you more on this topic. Thanks, Kelly AB _______________________________________________ Mosaic mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/mosaic_literacyworkshop.org. Search the MOSAIC archives at http://snipurl.com/MosaicArchive.
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