1. Your Collaborative Summer Reading Poster Project
Examples and Directions

2. Prior Knowledge Review:
Super Student Hint- a great resource for literary terminology:
Theme: the central idea or message of a work, the insight it offers into life
Themes in Romeo and Juliet

3. Prior Knowledge Review:
Dominant effect theme thesis statement formula:
HOW + WHAT = SO WHAT
HOW: a dominant literary technique the author uses to communicate her or his ideas
WHAT: the dominant ideas about the world the author shows through her or his fiction
SO WHAT: the significance of the ideas; the answer to the question “so what” or “resulting in what”
In Shakespeare uses hand imagery to reflect the Macbeths’ guilt, drawing attention to their action and emphasizing that free will, rather than fate, draws them to murder.

4. Student Exemplar: Thesis Statements
Positive: Focused on the author’s use of language and conventions to convey ideas

5. Day Two: Discussion Prep/ Group Written Work Sample
Today’s discussion/work partner pairs: based on novel you read for summer reading
With your partner:
5 minutes: Discuss to summarize your novel, and help each other out politely to eliminate any misconceptions about the novel’s plot
Dominant characters, settings, conflicts, themes, resolution
5 minutes: Determine a dominant theme of your novel that stands out above all the rest as what the author was trying to communicate to readers and select evidence to support your theme
15 minutes: Create a theme poster that provides support (paraphrased or quoted) for your thematic thesis statement
10 minutes: Present your poster to a group that didn’t read your novel to broaden their literary worldview and practice presentation skills
3 minutes: Reflect on your teamwork and public speaking skills to set goals for your Socratic seminar tomorrow

6. A Title that Reveals Theme
Dominant-Convention and Theme Thesis Statement
Nuanced analysis of the best evidence from the book to support your thesis
[Rubric for evidence:]
Excellence: Nuanced, quoted evidence you analyze for both theme and literary technique
Solid: Paraphrased evidence you analyze for theme
Not Quite: Valid paraphrased or quoted evidence that is not analyzed for connection to the theme in thesis