How to Teach Themes Strategically: a Guide for Teachers

Young learners or adult, everyone find themes difficult to interpret one or more times during learning lessons. Teacher training courses will teach you how to tackle them and teach themes in strategic and effective ways.

The education system is now developed in such a way that a learner as young as fourth standard is also asked about themes and their interpretation about it. An appropriate pre and primary teacher training is absolutely necessary for this.

You might be a trainer of TEFL or completed business English teacher training, your focus needs to be on empowering students so that they can identify themes in the content. Along with this they need to be able to argue about thematic structures also.

Thematic triad is one such solution that teacher training institutes are investing in while finding out strategic solution to teaching about themes. How you can apply that ad why it can be a successful attempt- all will be discussed herein.

What is thematic triad?

Before you start imparting knowledge about themes, you need your learners to know by heart that themes are beyond what the characters of the literary piece say or how they act. They have to read between lines to get a grip of this and develop an understanding about the various thematic components.

Now, as for your triad technique, ask your students to identify the thematic components present in the piece of literature they are learning right now. Then create small groups of three students and finally ask them to apply one of the triads into a sentence. There you have your own thematic argument.

This involves getting a clear idea about the thematic components and brainstorming also. You as the trainer, induce the knowledge of common thematic components like love, power, ambition, youth, pain, fear etc.

How to apply thematic triad practically?

You can prepare charts and place them at the class so that whenever the children read a text they ca associate the themes that are arising in there. Consecutive practice will make hem expert at these.

The group of three learners is what you should concentrate upon. Make it very clear from the start that they cannot be right or wrong about the themes. The basic aim should always focus on identifying the theme correctly. You can also instruct that the groups may choose any theme at random and see whether its features suits or not with the literature. 

What will be an example of thematic triad?

Say for example you and your class are reading ‘Daffodils’. Ask your class to identify a few thematic components like romance, beauty, memory, and imagination. Now ask students to group any three, such as, romance, beauty and imagination and make sentence with them.

One of the probable sentences might be, “Imagination of nature and its beauty gives birth to romance”. There are endless possibilities, as you can already fathom.

Students can come up with various sentences. During the initial stages the sentences will lack structural construction and none of the three students will be satisfied. But with time these will improve manifold with a ready identification of themes. 

You need to have thorough knowledge about the text you are about to teach and be insightful about it. Remember, with an international teaching diploma you might get a job anywhere in the world and be a trainer of English. You need to master the understanding of themes yourself first.

 Locate the thematic components prior to imparting lessons. Make mental notes of what thematic statements may be appropriate. Keep in mind, you always need to stay a step ahead to make sure you can groom and guide the learners, who follow you, in the most appropriate way.

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