Blended Learning Lesson Plan

Lesson Title: Understanding theme vs main idea

Objectives:
Students will be able to pick out the theme of a story
Students will be able to pick out the main idea of a story
Students will be able to tell the difference between theme and main idea
State Standards:

➢ Standard 6: Summarize key details and ideas to support analysis of

thematic development.
➢ 6.1 Determine the development of a theme within a text; summarize using
key details.
Context: This lesson is a fourth grade English lesson about finding the theme and the main idea.
I am teaching this lesson because it’s crucial for the students to know how to pick out the theme
and main idea of a story and to also know the difference between the two. It is important to know
how to find the main idea and know how to find the theme to better understand the story that is
being read. Before this lesson, students learned about the importance of finding details to
understand what the story is about and how to find the theme and also the main idea of the story.
Overall this lesson will be helpful when reading so the students are able to better understand
what they are reading and to better retain the information.

Data: Students will be grouped based on their previous quiz. Students will be placed by highest,
middle, and lowest scored group. This will allow me to know how much time I need to spend on
each group and how much help each group needs. In this lesson data will be collected by a
teaching game online called quizizz using questions about the theme and main idea and how to
pick out and know the difference. This data will show me how much more they learned and what
I need to re teach in the next class session.

Materials:
 Part of lesson Materials Link

Introduction Smart Board

(Quizzizz)

Teacher Directed IPads, white boards Short story I will create

Collaborative Smart board

2 Ipads
(kahoot)
Independent Digital Laptop https://www.storylineonline.net/books/stellaluna/

Closure Laptop
(google form)

Procedures:
Introduction (10 minutes):

Students will enter the classroom and put their things away in their cubbies and find their seats.
After they find their seats students will be directed on the board to get out their notebooks and
flip to a new page with the title being Theme vs Main Idea. I will then explain the information to
the students. I will then describe the different roles at each rotational activity.

Teacher Directed (10 minutes):

First, I will have the students discuss to me the difference between theme and main idea. In this
group I will have
the students each grab a small white board and a marker. I will then have a
short story written on a board and they will have to use key details to find out the theme and the
main idea of the story. Then we will procced to talk about what they each did to find out the
theme and the main idea of the short story.

Collaborative (10 minutes):

In this group, they will be divided into 2 small groups to compete against each other using
kahoot to find out the theme or main idea of a couple short examples that will appear on their
computer screen. The two groups will have to work together to find out the key detail of each
story to define the theme or main idea. The two teams will work together between the two to see
how fast they can figure out the theme or main idea of the example that pops up. Then when they
are done they will discuss along each other what they learned, and the winning team will be
rewarded with candy.

Independent Digital (10 minutes):

In this section each student will have their own laptop and will be able to choose where to sit in
the room.
They will have to login to google classroom and work on a short worksheet about
theme and main idea that is based on an online book we watched pervious class and in today’s
class using storylineonline.

They then will have to searched up a new book online to watch and write out the theme and main
idea of the story they picked. They will then turn this in on paper.

Closure (10 minutes):

I will then direct the students to put everything away and make their way back to their desks. I
will ask the students if they have any questions about the lesson. Then, students will fill out a
google form on their laptop, so they can ask me any questions they have and then write what
they learned new. This will be used in the next class session so I will be able to know the
progress each student made/making.

Rationale:
Storylineonline (website):
This lesson tool helps me find online books that I am able to show the students in class.
They are able to listen to someone read out loud while also watching the book come to life.
This helps me out with my standards because it gets the students involved with the story, so
it helps grab their attention. This helps me because they can actually see what they are
reading rather than be being up front and reading to them. This website will also allow
them to pick out other book that they can watch so it helps them better be involved and
helps them retain information.

Kahoot:
Kahoot is a very popular website or app that is used in any type of education. It is a great
and fun game that also quizzes them on a topic. I will choose a game already created on
kahoot that ive already approved on for class. This will help with the kids being able to
interact and work together with the group game I want them to do.
Quizzizz:
This is also a very popular quiz game that is used to know each students progress and to
know what they know and what they need help on. For this I will also use one that is
created that is already approved to be used in class.