Theme Review

Aesop Fable: Two Travelers and a Bear

Two Men were traveling in company through a forest, when, all at once, a huge Bear crashed out of the brush near them.

One of the Men, thinking of his own safety, climbed a tree.

The other, unable to fight the savage beast alone, threw himself on the ground and lay still, as if he

were dead. He had heard that a Bear will not touch a dead body.

It must have been true, for the Bear snuffed at the Man's head awhile, and then, seeming to be satisfied that he was dead, walked away.

The Man in the tree climbed down. "It looked just as if that Bear whispered in your ear," he said. "What did he tell you?"

"He said," answered the other, "that it was not at all wise to keep company with a fellow who would desert his friend in a moment of danger."

Part A: Which sentence states a theme of the passage?

• Protect yourself above others.

• Misfortune is the test of true friendship.

• You should always help someone in need.

• Do not be fooled by those bigger.

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.2

CCSS.RL.6.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

CCSS.RL.5.9

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

Part B: Which detail supports the answer in Part A?

• The Man in the tree climbed down.

• "It looked just as if that Bear whispered in your ear," he said.

• "What did he tell you?"

• "He said," answered the other, "that it was not at all wise to keep company with a fellow who would desert his friend in a moment of danger."

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.2

CCSS.RL.6.1

CCSS.RL.7.1

CCSS.RI.7.1

CCSS.RI.8.1

Excerpt from Project Hush by William Tenn

I guess I'm just a stickler, a perfectionist, but if you do a thing, I always say, you might as well do it right. Everything satisfied me

about the security measures on our assignment except one—the official Army designation. Project Hush. I don't know who thought it up, and I certainly would never ask, but whoever it was, he should have known better. When you want a project kept secret, you don't give it a designation like that! You give it something neutral, some name like the Manhattan and Overlord they used in World War II, which won't excite anybody's curiosity. But we were stuck with Project Hush and we had to take extra measures to ensure secrecy. Naturally, the commanding general of the heavily fortified research post to which we were attached could not ask what we were doing, under penalty of court-martial, but he had to be given further instructions to shut off his imagination like a faucet every time he heard an explosion. Some idiot in Washington was actually going to list Project Hush in the military budget by name! It took fast action, I can tell you, to have it entered under Miscellaneous "X" Research. Well, we'd covered the unforgivable blunder, though not easily, and now we could get down to the real business of the project. Project Hush was set up to counter new weapons in development. Our goal was not just to reach the Moon. We had done that on 24 June 1967 with an unmanned ship that carried instruments to report back data on soil, temperature, cosmic rays and so on. Unfortunately, it was put out of commission by a rockslide. An unmanned rocket would be useless against the new weapons. We had to get to the Moon before any other country did and set up a permanent station—an armed one—and do it without anybody else knowing about it.

Part A: Which sentence states a theme of the passage?

• Hiding something is wrong.

• Do not trust others to do the job.

• Safety for the country is important.

• It is hard to keep something a secret.

Part B: Which detail supports the answer in Part A?

• Everything satisfied me about the security measures on our assignment except one

• But we were stuck with Project Hush and we had to take extra measures to ensure secrecy.

• Some idiot in Washington was actually going to list Project Hush in the military budget by name!

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.2

CCSS.RL.6.1

CCSS.RL.7.1

CCSS.RI.7.2

CCSS.RI.8.2

The lesson or message that the author wants you to learn by the end of the story is called. . .

• conflict

• theme

• point of view

• foreshadowing

Tags

CCSS.RL.5.3

CCSS.RL.5.5

CCSS.RL.6.3

CCSS.RL.7.3

CCSS.RL.8.3

Why is it important to find a story's theme?

• It is the purpose/reason why the author wrote the story in the first place.

• You need to know it to understand how the story ends.

• If you don't find it, you won't know what the story is about or understand what is happening.

• Your teacher might ask you to find it or might ask you to write a theme paragraph, so you have to know how to find it.

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.2

CCSS.RL.6.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

CCSS.RI. 9-10.9

CCSS.RL.9-10.2

Which of these things is not related to the "theme" in a story?

• how a character is feeling
• a "life lesson" the main character learns
• a big idea that people from any culture or any place can understand
• the moral of the story

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.2

CCSS.RL.6.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

CCSS.RI. 9-10.9

CCSS.RL.5.2

To uncover the theme of a story, should I consider what the characters discovered?

• True

• False

Tags

CCSS.RL.7.2

CCSS.RL.6.2

CCSS.RL.8.2

CCSS.RI. 9-10.9

CCSS.RL.5.9