Radar Chart

Weigh the themes in a book

Rate how strongly each theme or genre runs through the book and the ratings become a shape. Two children can rate the same book and produce visibly different shapes, which is where the conversation starts.

A shape you can argue with. Disagreement is obvious the moment the two charts sit side by side.

Good for genre as well as theme. How funny, how sad, how frightening — all at once.

Prints a blank grid. Ready to label and plot by hand.

Plot it on the whiteboard · printing a blank chart is free

The sheet it prints

The printable radar chart sheet — a blank grid to label and plot.

How do you compare the themes in a book?

You take five or six themes or genres — love, friendship, jealousy, comedy, adventure — and rate how strongly each one runs through the book, out of ten. Joining the ratings makes a shape. Instead of naming one theme you are weighing several against each other, and it is the balance between them that a class ends up arguing about.

Why score a theme out of ten?

Because a number forces a decision. Quite important is a phrase a child can write without thinking; a seven has to be defended against a six. The scoring is not the point — it is the thing that makes the justification necessary.

What do you do with the shape?

Compare it. Two children who read the same book produce different shapes, and the gap between them is the lesson. Ask the two furthest apart to defend their scores and the class hears two readings of the same evidence, which is worth more than agreeing on the right answer.

How do you run it on the whiteboard?

Pick the themes with the class first — five is plenty, and they have to be agreed before anyone scores anything. Then score them together, taking a number from one child and a reason from another. Fifteen minutes, and it works far better once a book is finished than partway through.

How do you make it harder or easier?

To start, three themes and a scale of one to five; ten points is more precision than most children can justify, and unjustifiable precision is just guessing. Then the full scale with a reason for every spoke. To stretch them, score the book at the halfway point and again at the end, and talk about which spokes moved and why.

From the classroom

Do not let them fill it in silently. Scored alone, this becomes a colouring exercise and the numbers mean nothing — the value is entirely in having to say why seven and not five, out loud, to somebody who disagrees. Pair them up and make each child defend two spokes. Also: pick themes that are genuinely arguable. Friendship and betrayal start a fight; adventure gets a shrug, because nobody disputes it.

Try it now

Take the theme everyone in the class has an opinion about and score that one first. The spread of numbers is the lesson.