Unit Plan 19 (Grade 8 ELA): Tracking Theme & Motif Across a Text

Focus: Theme development; evidence-based summaries; complexity

Grade Level: 8

Subject Area: English Language Arts (Reading—Literature)

Total Unit Duration: 5 sessions (one week), 50–60 minutes per session

I. Introduction

Great stories weave big ideas through recurring motifs—images, symbols, or phrases that echo and evolve. This week, students distinguish topic vs. theme, track motifs across chapters/scenes, explain how theme develops through character/setting/plot moves, and write objective, evidence-based summaries. We’ll also push into more complex passages to meet high-end grade 8 text demands.

II. Objectives and Standards

Learning Objectives — Students will be able to…

1. Determine a text’s theme and analyze how it develops across the whole, including relationships among characters, settings, and events (RL.8.2).
2. Cite strong textual evidence to support inferences/analysis about theme and motif (RL.8.1).
3. Read and comprehend grade-appropriate complex literature independently and proficiently (RL.8.10), and produce a clear objective summary (RL.8.2).

Standards Alignment — CCSS Grade 8

• RL.8.2: Determine a theme/central idea; analyze its development over the course of the text; provide an objective summary.
• RL.8.1: Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences.
• RL.8.10: By year’s end, read and comprehend literature (stories, dramas, poems) at the high end of grades 6–8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

Success Criteria — student language

• I can state a theme (not a topic) as a full claim and support it with precise evidence.
• I can track a motif (where it appears, how it changes) and explain how it pushes the theme forward.
• My objective summary names key events in order, avoids opinion, and connects to the theme.
• I can read a challenging passage and pull the strongest lines to support my analysis.