Themes, symbols, and motifs come alive when you use a Storyboard. In this activity, students will identify a theme of The Birchbark House and support it with evidence from the text.
One theme is "the relationship between humans and nature”:
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Student Instructions
Create a storyboard that identifies a theme in The Birchbark House. Illustrate examples and write a short description below each cell.
Connect your class to the story’s nature theme by having students keep a nature journal, just like Omakayas observes and learns from her surroundings in The Birchbark House. This helps students notice patterns and reflect on their relationship with nature throughout your reading unit.
Take students outside for 10–15 minutes, encouraging them to quietly observe plants, animals, and weather. Ask guiding questions about sounds, smells, and sights so they focus on details like Omakayas does in the novel.
Demonstrate journaling by writing your own observation on the board. Include descriptions (e.g., “I spotted a robin hopping in the grass” or “The air smelled crisp and earthy”). Encourage students to add their own thoughts or questions about what they notice.
Invite students to share a journal entry each week and relate their observations to the book’s theme of humans and nature. Highlight similarities between students’ experiences and Omakayas’s relationship with the natural world.
Create a bulletin board or digital slideshow for students to showcase their favorite journal entries and illustrations. This reinforces their learning and builds classroom community around the story’s key themes.
The main theme of The Birchbark House is the relationship between humans and nature. The story highlights how Omakayas and her family respect, learn from, and rely on nature for survival and wisdom.
Students can identify themes by looking for recurring ideas or messages throughout the story. They should find specific examples and evidence in the text that support the chosen theme.
Examples include Omakayas calling bear cubs her brothers, asking bears for knowledge about medicine, and Nokomis's dream of a deer leading to food for the family. These moments show deep connections with nature.
A storyboard activity asks students to illustrate scenes and write short descriptions that show examples of a theme, helping them visualize and explain key ideas from the book.
Teaching about themes, symbols, and motifs helps students develop critical thinking by connecting story elements to bigger ideas, making reading more meaningful and engaging.