3rd Grade · Reading · RL.3.3

Story Elements Lesson Plan for 3rd Grade

A ready-to-teach story elements lesson for 3rd Grade, built around describing a character's traits, wants, feelings and changes with details from the story, and mapping the characters, setting, problem, solution and order of events. Print the plan, print the practice pages, and you are set.

Approximately 47 minutes

Learning objective

Name a character trait and the detail that shows it
Explain why a character acts, reacts or changes
Compare two characters in one story

Materials

Character Traits From Actions in a Class Turtle Story
Story Map of a Story About a Runaway Hamster
Character Traits From Dialogue in a Story About a Bake Sale
Beginning, Middle and End of a Story About a Lost Mitten
What a Character Wants in a Story About a Soccer Tryout
Sequence of Events in a Story About Building a Birdhouse
Pencils, and whiteboard space for the modeled examples

Lesson steps

1. Build the background (5 min)
Connect story elements to a book the class already finished. Prior knowledge is doing most of the work in comprehension, so spend the time here.
2. Read aloud and think aloud (I do) (10 min)
Read a short passage aloud and stop twice to narrate your own thinking about story elements. Students are learning the move, not the answer.
3. Guided practice (we do) (12 min)
Read a second passage together. This time students find the evidence and you record it. Push every answer back to the text with "what words told you that?"
4. Independent practice (you do) (15 min)
Hand out "Character Traits From Actions in a Class Turtle Story". Students read and answer on their own. Circulate and ask individuals to point to the line in the text that supports their answer.
5. Share and close (5 min)
Two or three students share an answer and the evidence behind it. Restate story elements one final time in the students' own words, not yours.

Check for understanding

Ask each student to point to the evidence in the text for one of their answers. A student who has the right answer but cannot find the line has not yet learned story elements.

Differentiation

Extra support. Students who stall: pull them into a small group and rebuild story elements with concrete materials or a simpler text before asking for the written work again. Do not send the page home as homework, it will just rehearse the misunderstanding.

Extension. Students who finish early: ask them to write their own story elements problem for a partner to solve, then check the partner's work. Creating a problem is harder than solving one and it surfaces whether they really understand story elements.

Skills covered in this lesson

Character analysis · Story maps

Questions teachers ask about teaching story elements

What story elements do 3rd graders work on?

Third graders describe characters, including their traits, wants and feelings, and explain how their actions move the story along (CCSS RL.3.3). They also name the characters, setting, problem and solution and put the main events in order. This topic has character analysis sheets for the first part and story map sheets for the second.

How can I help my child describe a character?

Ask what the character did or said, then ask what kind of person would do that. Many charts give the quote and its paragraph number, so your child can focus on choosing a trait word like careful, patient or kind. For the last question, have your child point to two sentences in the story before writing.

What is the difference between a story map and a beginning, middle and end chart?

A story map has four boxes for the characters, setting, problem and solution. A beginning, middle and end chart asks what happens in each part of the story. Both kinds of sheets then have children number four or five events in story order.

Do the 3rd grade story elements worksheets have answer keys?

Yes. All 24 sheets have an answer key, with a sample answer for each box and for the written question. The key also lists other answers to accept, since more than one trait word or detail can fit.