Morgan Hawkes

March 30th, 2023

Oakland University

Student Learning Analysis (SLA)

March 21-24: “Romeo and Juliet”- Developing Theme Statements

Introduction:
During my student teaching experience at Rochester High School, I have taught five
sections of varying levels of LA9, including Essentials, Team-taught, and standard. Since taking
over as lead teacher this semester, my LA9 students have been studying “Romeo and Juliet.”
While teaching this content, I have surveyed and collected student insight and data that is
relevant to student understanding of content and level-based skills. To prepare students for their
summative assessment analysis of the play, students will complete work to evaluate their
understanding of “theme” and how to build theme statements. Practicing these skills will help
students visualize the needed steps to determine a central theme of a story and prepare them for
their One-Pagers, which will summarize a chosen central theme throughout the entire story of
“Romeo and Juliet.” To prepare students for this final assessment, students must use evidence-
based claims from their understanding to determine a theme. I assigned a Bell Ringer in which
students were asked to choose a Disney movie of their choice and identify the central theme from
that movie. From the data, I will be able to see a student's understanding and prior knowledge of
the “theme.” After taking this data, I then analyzed what the areas of concern were, how to
address them, and the necessary steps needed to fulfill the gap in understanding.

Common Core State Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.1
Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as
well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.2
Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course
of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an
objective summary of the text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.3
Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop
over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the
theme.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.9-10.5
Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g.,
parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery,
tension, or surprise.
CCSS.ELA-WRITING.WL.9-10.2a
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and
information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of
content. (a) Introduce a topic; organize complex ideas, concepts, and information to make
important connections and distinctions; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g.,
figures, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.
CCSS.ELA-WRITING.WL.9-10.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are
appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Learning Objectives:
Students will be able to draw topics out of a story and be able to explain their
relevance/importance to the greater plot and/or how it relates to the central theme.
Students will then create their own sample theme statements to prepare for their One-
Pager. (CCSS.ELA.RL.9-10.1, CCSS.ELA.RL.9-10.2, CCSS.ELA.WL.9-10.2a,
CCSS.ELA.WL.9-10.5)
Students will be able to recall important events and identify their significance to the
great plot of the story. ( CCSS.ELA.RL.9-10.5)
Students will be able to identify the chain of events and character development and how
they change throughout a story. ( CCSS.ELA.RL.9-10.3)

Goal:
The goal of this assessment was to gauge the level of understanding of “theme” and to
see if they would be able to effectively establish a clear theme throughout Disney movies. This
assessment was designed to take into account their level of understanding of “theme”, as well as
using a medium in which they had a clear level of understanding (i.e., using a Disney movie of
their choice.) This assesses their ability to find the greater meaning in basic pieces of work and
how to make them applicable to life.

Formative Assessment and Data Analysis:

As a Bell Ringer, students were asked to think of Disney movies they relate to and
understand. After choosing a movie of their choice, students were asked to think about the theme
of that movie. Before beginning this exercise, I asked the class “What IS ‘theme’?” From this
question, I got several different answers, confirming my suspicions that many students did not
have a solid understanding of the theme. After a student had said, “The moral of the story,”
students were then asked to go off of this new understanding and find the theme of their Disney
movie.

Student Data:
Exceptional (3): Students 14, 15, 16
Satisfactory (2): Students 5, 7, 10, 13, 17
Developing (1): Students 3, 8, 11
Needs Work (0): Students 1, 2, 6, 9, 12

Evidence of Students’ Work: Formative

Graph:

Analysis of Data:
After taking the initial data from the Bell Ringer, it was clear to see that many students
had not been familiar with the idea of theme or theme statements. When asked to do their Bell
Ringer, students were asked to give the theme to a Disney movie of their choice. After collecting
the bell ringers, the answers for the theme varied more than I had assumed. For some students,
they were easily able to pull out a key theme in a movie. For example, Student #4 had written
“Love comes in all forms. In order to love someone better, you must first understand their
struggles.” This was a great example of pulling a key theme from a story they were familiar with.
Other students were very unfamiliar with the idea of “theme,” and instead wrote single words, or
“topics.” For example, Student #12 wrote that the theme of Finding Nemo was “family.” While
they were on the right track and had a key understanding of what I wanted them to do, they
missed the fundamental idea of what a theme versus a topic was. In LA9, it is imperative that we
set the groundwork for the remainder of all students’ high school careers. It is not enough to
simply state that a prevalent topic within a story is family. Students must use evidentiary support
to claim their findings and prove why this is a prevalent theme throughout the story.
When looking over the data, I assigned four levels of understanding to the data. 0 =
Needs work, 1 = Developing, 2 = Satisfactory, and 3 = Exceptional. While going through the
Bell Ringers, I assessed each student based on their given answers. From the examples above,
Student #4 was ranked Exceptional, while Student #12 was ranked Needs Work. This being said,
many of the students within the “needs work” category were not necessarily wrong. In fact, they
had a surface level of understanding of what needed to be done. These students needed to work
on their understanding and be able to find a “theme” rather than a “topic,” and give evidence
from the story chosen to provide proof for their claims. To assess this problem, I had chosen
several sample Bell Ringers from each class and read them aloud. I simply asked, “out of these
samples, which do you think is the MOST correct?” Students unanimously agreed upon the
sample with more evidence, but I assured the other students that while they may have chosen that
sample, the other was not “bad” or “wrong”, per se. It was just the jumping-off point for finding
the theme. I then helped students take the first steps towards developing these “topics” into full-
developed theme statements to prepare for our One-Pagers.

Analysis of Future Teaching and Improvement:

Future Teaching Needs:

After working through their Bell Ringers, I decided that the students needed a more
structured approach to developing their theme statements. After reviewing the difference
between a “topic” and a “theme,” the students would be walked through the process of writing a
theme statement. I deduced that students need to be walked, step-by-step, through the process of
writing well-structured theme statements. To begin the pre-writing process, students would take
their original Disney movies, and students were asked to look for “topics” throughout the movies
that stood out to them. From this point, students would begin to build their theme statements off
of their topics, proving to them that it was the basic building block to creating a well-thought-out
theme statement.

Plan for Improvement:

 Students will work in small steps to achieve their goal, which is creating a theme
statement about Romeo and Juliet. This One-Pager will serve as the students' summative
assessment of Romeo and Juliet and will prove, not only that students can create a well-thought-
out theme statement, but also that they can prove their theme by using several pieces of evidence
and reasoning to argue their point. After assessing their standpoint on the first activity, I knew
what I needed to do to create a better understanding among the students. Students need more
structure and basic guidelines on how to do things. That being said, I created a PowerPoint that
walked students through the basic steps of writing a theme statement, as well as giving them
many examples of completed theme statements so that they may see it in context. Students would
then try, first-hand, drafting their theme statements. We would work through the problem areas
together on the board, and perhaps even identify common themes together.

Additional Instruction:

Students were asked, once again, what the meaning of a theme was. After being reminded
of the definition of theme, students were asked to take out a scrap sheet of paper. I created a list
of steps for creating a theme statement. To begin, I asked students to remember their Disney
movies. We would come up with a unanimous one, which was Finding Nemo. As a class, we
found several different topics that proved important throughout the movie, such as family,
independence, friendship, etc. From this point, students were asked to go through each of the
steps in the slide and create their theme statement with their Disney movies.

After modeling this together on the board, we once again did this activity again, using
Romeo and Juliet as a jumping-off point. Again, I asked students to choose topics from the play,
and we listed them together on the board. For example, betrayal, love, consequences, family,
friendship, etc. From here, students were asked to, once again, go through each of the steps to
create their own Theme Statement draft for Romeo and Juliet. At the end, I pulled up several
finished theme statements and showed them the context of a completed example. Many students,
now understanding the steps and the process, were able to develop good first drafts. We would
then read several student examples out loud and advise, as a class, on how to tweak the drafts for
their final summative assessment.

Summative Assessment and Data Analysis:

Student Data:
Exceptional (3): Students 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Satisfactory (2): Students 1, 2, 18
Developing (1): Student 16
Needs Work (0): None
Evidence of Students’ Work: Summative

Graph:
Analysis of Data:
As a One-Pager, it was clear to see that students now understood the difference between
“topic” and “theme.” From the beginning data, nearly a quarter of students were mistaking one
for the other. After analyzing the completed One-Pagers, I found that out of 133 students, zero
students had confused “topic” with “theme.” While there were still students that could have used
additional instruction to completely refine and choose evidence-based theme statements, all of
my students had a clear understanding of the difference between the two.

Conclusion:
As you can tell by the graph, the additional instruction given to explain the difference
between “topic” and “theme” drastically decreased the ‘Needs Work’ category, from about a
quarter of the students to zero across all classes. Along with the students' ability to prove their
understanding of the difference between these two pieces of information, students were also
graded on their ability to set up their theme statement correctly and how well they were able to
prove their statements to be true using evidentiary proof from the play. For example, students
needed to begin their theme statements with “In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, A
central theme is…” Along with this, students were asked to identify two quotes to support their
claim, a character that is represented in their chosen theme, and a short paragraph indicating their
stance on the subject and/or why they believe this to be the more prevalent theme throughout the
play. Through doing this activity, students are now able to take important topics throughout
pieces of work and develop clear claims to a theme statement using evidence and reasoning from
the piece to support their choice.

Please see below for a student example of a completed one-pager.

Materials mentioned:
● One-Pager Rubric
● Theme Statement PowerPoint
● Bell Ringer