Reading for the Theme

Do you believe if I told you that the sun would be break next month? I just read a story called "The Summer the Sun Did Not Blow Up" by "Birmati Lakhan." This story is about what I did ask you at the first sentence. The story has only 14 paragraphs and it is very easy to read. It has the picture of a sun and also the title of the story is about the sun so I can guess that this story will be about the sun. This story happened in Fiji, which is an island country on the pacific ocean. During the time of 1960's when the author, Birmati Lakhan, was six years old. He was told by the other kids that the sun would be break in next month and the children were all shock about it. They decided that they will buy a big big boat and a refrigerator and they will stay in it and be safe form the sun. Then, they told the grown ups and their parents about this thing, the grown up found out that was the rumour from a 14 year-old-girl who had read an article in a book that the sun might explode after millions of years and after she told other kids by mouth to mouth, it changed from 'millions of years' to 'next month.' Reading this story made me think that sometime telling one things to too many people, the massage might change from good to bad, small to big and that will made other people got the wrong massage.

During I read this story, I used a lot of reading strategies to help me figure out what would be the theme of this story. For example, I used a dictionary to help me understand what I read. In this story, I found the meaning of the word "rumour" in my dictionary and found out that this word means "gossip" which is very useful for me because this story talks about the gossip about the sun. I tried to picture in my mind what I have just read to help me remember what I read. For example, when the children talked about the ways that could save themselves from the sun explosion in paragraph six and seven, I tried to make a picture in my head so I could remember what did they wanted to do. I also used what I have read and understood in the text to help me understand better what I am reading in the same text. For example, When I read "the children could not eat properly" in paragraph nine, I knew that the children could not eat properly because the gossip of the sun that they heard from other children made them felt worry and could not eat anything. Last, I underline the information or ideas in the text to help me remember it. For example, I underline 12Th paragraph which I think it is the most important part of the story and it also is the theme of this story so I underline the whole paragraph. I think this story is a good story because the theme of the story is very good. It reminds me of some game that I played when I was in the elementary school. In the game, teacher will write some thing on the card and let the first student read it and tell it to the next students until the last student. Which group comes up with the right answer and the fastest will win the game. It is very fun. I think the two main theme of this story are "Rumors are easy to start but hard to stop" and "Rumors plays on our deepest fears."

This time I use four strategies of the reading strategies to help me more understand this story. While I read the story, I tried to think about what should be the theme of the story that the writer want the reader to learn from this story. I think all of the strategies are worked very well and very useful for me. It helps me understand the story better and also I could find the theme easier because of using these strategies. Next time when I read the story like this, I will try to use for reading strategies and try some different strategies to find out what strategies is the most useful for me.