Parent Tips: Lesson 2.2

Lesson 2.2: Themes & Reasoning focuses on developing foundational analytical skills. We teach kids to notice different types of themes in texts and then to think deeply about why those themes might be in that particular text. Some kids intuitively see in patterns—they can’t even articulate why a particular pattern is obvious to them (watch them try to explain by moving their body around and gesturing, puzzled how to make what they know into words)—and others are more linear thinkers and need systems for pattern analysis. We embrace both types of kids.

As part of their theme analysis, we ask your child to be introspective. Many kids assume that their thoughts are utterly random and find the idea that there might be a theme that only they can see in something they wrote absurd. This lesson teaches them not to be so hasty. Their thoughts are likely not completely random, and they will learn to interrogate what patterns might underlie their thought process.

The second major skill in this lesson is something we call a Why Tree. The Why Tree is a hybrid of an age-appropriate inner Socratic dialogue and a technical root cause analysis. In essence, we ask your child to imagine a structured dialogue between their inner toddler (“WHY?”) and their inner old wise person (“Well …”). We hope that your child has a great deal of fun with this work! Many parents have written to us to let us know how happy they and their child are to be asked such deep questions. Gifted kids, and many regular kids, are hungry to be asked to wrestle with the deeper questions underlying simple-seeming ideas. Though, of course, other kids find such work less comfortable. For this skill to take and to be effective, kids must know that they are free and encouraged to seek the truth, wherever it leads. They do not have to say “the right” thing, whatever they imagine that to be. We want your child to learn to think. That, above all, produces great writing.

Theme hunting and analysis are both Big Brain Leaps.