Inferring themes

Last week I talked with my students about theme for our novel study, Maniac Magee. We reviewed what a theme means, and then I asked what the main messages or purpose of the book was. After discussing, we came up with three themes: homes/homelessness, racism, and names/nicknames. I made the point that no where in the book does it say that the theme is racism, etc. We had to infer what the themes were. I reminded them that inferring is using background knowledge plus context clues to figure out meaning from the book where it doesn't say it outright. Once we uncovered the three themes, I had students find evidence from the book to support each theme. Then we discussed it as a class.