Plot is not my favorite thing to teach, or it hasn’t been in the past. However, that changed this week. I think I never liked teaching it because I felt I didn’t have a solid, engaging way of teaching the concept. Now, I have a great way of teaching it! The kids loved it, I loved it, and the mastery level of plot was sky high! (Who hoo!)
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I grabbed this Plot Resource from Amanda Sorrells (ETX Teaching) on TpT. It might be my best purchase on TpT so far. It was easy to use and very self-explanatory. First, it has plot (or story) cards for four different picture books. Enemy Pie, A Bad Case of the Stripes, Arnie the Donut, and The Most Magnificent Thing.
I just used Enemy Pie because I wanted to do one book for the whole class. However, you could easily do this in groups and have each group do a different text. You could also do it as a spiral later in the year with a different text. So many options.
As you can see, I did an my whole group lesson on the board. She has a print out of it as well in the product though (the orange paper on my board.) So you could put that on the projector. I just wanted to draw a version on the board. The cards that are provided were perfect for labeling on my board. The students created their own version of this in their student journals.
Then, it was their turn to work in groups and do their own. We used large construction paper. You will need large paper for this. You could also cut anchor chart paper in half if needed. The students drew the plot mountain, then glued on the labels of the plot parts.
Then, the students were ready to glue on the pieces of the story. We had already read Enemy Pie earlier in the week for part of our 180 Book Challenge. What I love about this resource is the students did not need a copy of the text with them. The cards include enough text for the students to be able to determine where the card belongs in the plot if the have read the book.
When the students were finished, they had to talk together and come up with a THEME for the text. I liked that the theme card wasn’t provided because this led to great conversations with the students.
It was such an incredible lesson. If you are looking for a way to teach plot–this is it! I plan on doing it again with the other picture books throughout the year.
I hope this has been beneficial to you!
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I hope you have a great week!
Hillary
