Book Read-alouds/ Digital Copies

Plot structure/ Plot Mountain

The plot of a story is the story line, or the events that happen in the story. Most plots follow a similar pattern. This is called the plot structure. The plot structure can be thought of like climbing a mountain, with each part of the story being a different part of the climb. Because of this, we use a picture of a mountain, called a plot mountain, to organize the parts of a story.

This video has a song that describes each part of a typical story plot. 
This is a diagram showing what happens in each part of a typical story plot.  "Background" is also sometimes called "exposition" or "introduction." 

Vocabulary Words:

Exposition: the beginning of a story where you learn about the setting, and characters, including nay important background information. This part is sometimes called the beginning, background, or introduction. 

Rising action: the part of the story that comes after the exposition. The rising action is most of the story. These are the events that lead up to the biggest part. There will often be multiple problems or conflicts throughout the rising action. 

Climax: the part of the story where there is the biggest problem, or the problem gets to its biggest point. You can usually tell you're at the climax when it feels very suspenseful, and you just can't put the book down. The climax is usually close to the end of the story. 

Falling action: after the climax, the story starts to calm down. The big problem is dealt with and the characters are settling down. 

Resolution: the end of the story. The characters wrap up any loose ends and the reader find out how they end things. 

Using text evidence

In 5th grade, students are expected to use specific sentences from a text to support their answers.  We can use the RACE Strategy to write a strong response using text evidence.

Example:

Question: Why did Señora Perez think that a story should be written about the sea monster? 

Response:

Senora Perez wants to make a story about the monster so they can tell everybody that it is good before anybody starts thinking it’s bad. In the text, Senora Perez says, “We must make up a wonderful story about this sea monster, give it a name, make it a friendly monster, and then tell the world.” This shows that she wants the tourists to read the story and think the sea monster is friendly and they won’t be scared to come visit. 


Restate / Answer / Cite / Explain

Character Traits

Conflict

Conflict is a problem that a character (or real person) has. There are different types of conflict that people can have. 

Person vs. Self:

Person vs Person:

Person vs Nature:

Person vs Society:

Theme

Theme is a life lesson that you learn from a story.  The author doesn't come right out and say the theme, so you have to infer the theme based on what happens in the story.

Ask yourself these questions:

The theme is a FULL sentence, not just a word.

Inferences

When you make an inference, you use clues from the text and your background knowledge to figure out something the author hasn't directly told you.

You can make inferences from text and illustrations. 

Example:

I can infer that the story is set in autumn because the character describes seeing red and yellow leaves falling from the trees.  I know that the leaves change and fall in autumn.

Editing and Revising your writing

Nonfiction text structures

Nonfiction texts can be organized in different ways based on what the text is about.  

Text Structures Chart