Above are two great ideas from other bloggers on teaching Story Elements. I always need something to create WITH the students and have on display to refer back to throughout the unit. Start with anchor charts! Anchor charts are always a necessity when teaching mini-lessons. (Sources: RL.4.3 Story Elements Complete Unit) expanding to focus on the character and their problem.Here are some of the key tasks that I think are important to hit as educators when tackling this standard: In 3rd grade, there is a lot of exploring and inferring that may not be directly written out in the text. RL.4.3: Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).Įach grade gets a little deeper into students’ inference skills.RL.3.3: Describe characters in a story (e.g., their traits, motivations, or feelings) and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.RL.2.3: Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.

RL.1.3: Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.

RL.K.3: With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.

Here is a breakdown of the standards for first through third grade. So, while a first-grade teacher may read this blog post and think that many of the ideas are too advanced for his or her first graders, remember what the students will need to learn in future grades and try to shape your teaching towards that. Once you start getting into second and third grade, it focuses more on the character and the problems that the character faces. Retelling in first grade covers the basic character/setting/event elements.

I think story elements would be a great place to start since you have to master story elements before moving on to retelling. Story Elements can be taught very closely with the retell standard. I’m going to discuss primary grades (kindergarten, first, second, and third grade) when covering teaching story elements. This standard spans over many grades but gets more and more specific the older the kiddos get. I’m going to cover teaching Story Elements today. Welcome back to the 3rd installment of Exploring ELA.

Fiction story elements anchor chart