Developing Theme 6-6-18

Today in class we began by getting asked the  questions that students made during last nights homework. The important question we were asked was a what if question asking, how would Holden be different if Allie had not died. The answers to these questions were extremely varied and all had merit to them. From there Mr. Rivers asked us to identify what words that were written on the board could be a topic from the chapters we have read so far, We came up with the topics; loss, anxiety, and fear. From those we dove deeper into topics and themes and went far enough to have example themes put on the board. We then reviewed the ways that we can make a theme better by adding specificity(who/what/when/where/why/how). After, he gave us the theme "teenagers who have anxiety act phony and we, as groups, had to enhance this theme by adding specificity. These themes are posted on the classroom page. We did this because our homework is to read chapters 17- End for next Thursday and create two of our own themes from the book.
The importance of learning about specificity is because it gives us the knowledge that not everyone will agree with our ideas. If we make a claim that is super broad and general it is either a yes or no answer but once specificity is added, the answers can become more complicated. Like yes, I agree with your theme, but I do not believe this is WHY this theme is true. It allows room for argumentation even if your theme is the popular opinion. This is because not everyone's brain works the same way and we are all capable of independent thought. And not only are we learning this in our classroom, but Catcher in the Rye does this as well.