Plot Structure Questions Chart

Every year, my students help me to become a better teacher. We will run into some type of a mental road block, and together we will need to think our way through it – this always results in a new way of teaching a piece of content and honestly, it is one of my favorite things about teaching. I love the puzzles!

This year we hit a stumbling block with plot structure. Not the definitions, those were easy enough to learn. Not with discussing the novel we read, Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule, that seemed to go okay. (Notice the word choice “seemed”) The problem came when I asked my students to apply their learning to their own novels, and it became clear that they needed more support.

As my former principal used to say,  “The smartest person in the room, is the room.” It was time to revisit our class novel and the concept of the plot structure chart. We had finished the book two weeks ago, and I assured the class that was actually a good thing as what we would remember now were the major plot points. Using my Promethean board, we brainstormed the people, places, and events in the story. Then we sorted each of our responses into the appropriate category: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution. Where the information was incomplete, I thought aloud and asked myself questions, adding to the categories.

Then we went through the categories to see how the basic problem intertwines through the plot, how it reaches its high point in the climax, and then has to be resolved. I have decided that I am going to leave out the word “exciting” when teaching about climax next year, at least initially, because that word has been a stumbling block for my students this year. We also made a record of the questions that I asked myself and them to clarify our thinking. Those questions I turned into the chart that I am sharing with you today – a Questions for Plot Structure chart as an option for those students who the plot structure pyramid charts confuse.  I am also sharing the completed Questions for Plot Structure – Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule Example  that my students and I created together.

 

I hope this is helpful to some of you! How do you teach plot structure?

If you were interested in this post, you may be interested in a more recent post:

Plot Structure Charts and Google Apps

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