Classroom Theme Posters

Theme posters are one of my MUST HAVES!

I printed the theme posters below from Beth Newingham. But there are TONS of free theme posters floating around on TeachersPayTeachers!

In the past, I always had theme posters hanging on my wall. I had them blank in the beginning of the year, and as we read books as a class, we added pictures of the book covers to the theme we thought it matched up with. I would print the book cover and when we finished the book, we would talk about the evidence to support various themes, always understanding that a book really can fit many themes, but that we were going to choose the one we felt it fit in with BEST.

Now that our school is using a new program, Collaborative Classroom, for all things ELA (Seriously, everything. If you are looking for new curriculum, this is it.) I still wanted to do theme posters but make it work for that program. So, since I work with grades 2-4, I printed some freebie theme posters for each of them. Then I printed and laminated the book covers that the teachers will be reading to their students for the comprehension piece of the curriculum. Now, as teachers read a book aloud, they can connect it to the common themes. And anyone who teaches at a state testing grade knows, theme will be tested. Oh yes, theme will be tested.

Bonus? Talking about theme is a great conversation. It teaches kids how to provide evidence to support their opinion and to respect the opinions of others!