Creating a plot diagram not only helps students learn the parts of the plot, but it reinforces major events and helps students develop a 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 The Poet X. 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 for The Poet X.
Student Instructions:
You will know best how to explain the plot line to students with special needs, as you have worked with them. Use manipulatives, computer interactives, and repetition to get the information across.
Rather than a blank canvas, students with special needs will find more success if you do the heavy lifting of writing the elements of the plot either on the computer or little slips of paper, whatever will be easier for them to work with.
Students can then put the ideas in order of the story. Often students find it easier to find the moment of highest action, or the turning point first. Then they fit all the other ideas around it.
As a story gets started and the reader meets the characters, events start happening. Likely, the events provide conflict between the protagonist and herself, someone else, or nature. The playing out of the conflict leads to the climax, or turning point of the story.
After a story reaches its highest point of action, or climax, nothing will ever be the same for the characters. The story starts wrapping up, as the falling action finds the characters getting situated with their new information and roles. Then the story resolves, or wraps up.
Studying the plot diagram helps students to compartmentalize and organize the information in a story into a logical flow. It helps students to make predictions, as they expect what should probably come next. It also helps them to see how conflicts are resolved. These skills can translate to real life.