Johnson's Jems

Theme is a difficult concept for students to grasp. This worksheet helps guide students through finding evidence from the text that supports how the theme is developed through the story. The last example gives the evidence, and the students must create the theme. *This is also available as part of my "Raymond's Run" unit bundle.

"Raymond's Run" is a story filled with great figurative language. The following activity will guide kids through the process of analyzing the figurative language using context clues. In my classroom, this has been a challenging activity that causes students to have to think. I usually have them work in partners on this. The line numbers on the worksheet come from the McDougal Littell Interactive Reader. You may need to change them to match your resource. *This is also available as part of

This worksheet is helpful for students to understand how to figure out character traits. They have to find quotes as evidence to support various character traits in the story. There are both physical and personality traits given. *This is also available as part of my "Raymond's Run" unit bundle.

These plot blocks are used to show students how to summarize a story. Divide the class into groups of 10-12 students. Each group would receive a set of plot blocks. It works best if each set is printed on different colored paper. You can then refer to each group by the colored paper (i.e. the blue group, orange group, etc.). Each group is then responsible to use the plot blocks to create a human plot map. The students should position themselves in order to show the typical "plot mountain"