How Can You Stretch Students' Thinking?
Challenge students' ability to define and limit the main events of the story by choosing stories that include multiple characters and events that have varying degrees of importance.
Students can also use the story elements graphic organizer as a prewriting activity. Another idea is to have students create 4 x 6 cards containing information about a variety of characters, settings, and conflicts for a possible story. Then, students in groups can pool their cards and choose different elements to write a story. They can write and illustrate their newly created tale and present it to the class.
At the upper-grade levels, you should help students analyze stories on multiple levels, including decoding symbolism. For example, on one level, Huckleberry Finn is a story about two boys and their adventures growing up in a small town on the Mississippi River. On another level, it is a story about racism and the conflicts between freedom and civilization.
As students talk and write about stories, they should be challenged to ground their statements about the story in evidence from the textÑfor example, citing actions in the story that demonstrate a character's courage.
When Can You Use It?
Use this strategy to identify parts of a story, prepare for book talks, retell or summarize a story, or show a story's sequence of events.
Students may use the graphic organizer as a prewriting tool to plan the beginning, middle, and end of a story. In addition, students can create illustrations for each story element instead of writing. These can be used for wordless picture books, or students can then write stories to accompany the illustrations.
Lesson Plans
Story Elements, Danny and the Dinosaur
This lesson introduces primary students to the elements of a story that is read aloud. Students begin by identifying the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and then use a story map to organize the story elements.
