An exceptional way to help your students follow a story is to have them track the events from it. Not only is this a great way to teach the parts of a plot, it also reinforces major events, and helps students develop greater understanding of literary structures. For a novel that has multiple plots, this is an excellent way for students to keep them all straight. At the elementary level, tracking plot points is a great place to start developing your students' understanding of plot structure before moving on to more complicated concepts, such as five act structure.
Teachers can ask students to create a storyboard that captures the concept of the narrative arc in a novel by using any of the examples which come with templates found on the Parts of a Story article.
(These instructions are completely customizable. After clicking "Copy Activity", update the instructions on the Edit Tab of the assignment.)
Student Instructions
Create a visual Event Arch of Holes.
The first step is to explain the elements of the narrative arc to students. Teaching the vocabulary of the narrative arc will empower students and help them to differentiate between the parts of the arc.
Often students are overwhelmed about where to start, and ironically, starting in the middle seems to help. If students find the turning point first, the moment after which nothing is the same, then everything else in the narrative arc will fall into place.
After finding the climax, students can fill in the elements of the arc that are before and after that in order to understand the full narrative. Some students will need scaffolding as the teacher walks around the room.
The easiest way to track events in a story is to create a plot line for the story. This is a visual representation of a mountain, with the early story events climbing the mountain, and the later events going down the other side.
In the story Holes, the main character Stanley is sure that he is cursed. He gets in trouble and is sent to a boys' detention camp. The turning point of the story is when he carries his friend up a mountain and the curse is lifted.
The narrative arc of the story refers to the way the story is laid out. At the beginning, the setting and characters are introduced, and things start to happen. The arc rises up to the climax, after which nothing will be the same. Finally, the action starts wrapping up and the story is resolved for the characters.