Creating a plot diagram not only helps students learn the parts of the plot, but it reinforces major events and help students develop greater understanding of literary structures. Students can create a storyboard capturing the narrative arc in a work with a six-cell storyboard containing the major parts of the plot diagram. In this activity, students will create a visual plot diagram of major events in Ghost. Students should identify major turning points in the novel such as the Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action and Resolution.
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Due Date:
Objective: Create a visual plot diagram of Ghost.
Student Instructions:
Requirements:
In order to help students summarize, assist them in identifying the main points of the story. You could discuss this as a class, or you could write the plot elements on slips of paper and have students put them in order of the story. Students will likely need varying amounts of help with this project.
In most stories, the climax or turning point is the most important part of the story. After this moment, nothing will ever be the same for the main character. Help students pull out the climax, and they can more easily work around that to find the other elements of the plot.
Using a visual is invaluable in helping students to understand how to summarize a short story or novel. By writing and drawing each of the plot elements on a storyboard, students will more easily be able to summarize.
If you are trying to summarize a story or novel, identifying the elements of the plot is the best way to summarize. A summary is the expression of the main ideas of what is going on in the story. It contains the exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.
The climax is the turning point of the story, and after this moment, nothing will be the same for the main character. Often if students find the climax of the story first, the rest of the elements of the story will fall into place more easily for them.
The rising action is the set of events that lead the characters to the climax of the story. In other words, these are the things that start happening in the plot of the story. The falling action consists of the events after the climax, when the story starts wrapping up.