Discuss the plot of a story and the various activities that lead up to a major event or the climax of the story. Students can talk about what they think about the author’s ideas. Then they can discuss how one event in the story leads to another as they chart the plot of the story.
Students identify the main plot of a story, as well as answer questions relating to the “who,” “what,” “how” and other aspects of the story. They order the story to answer questions such as who the protagonist of the story is and what the protagonist did. This helps them appreciate the logical ordering the story.
Select a passage of about 300 words and then delete some words from the passage. These words can be adjectives, adverbs, nouns or other words about which you want students to learn. Then read the passage to the class and ask students to think about which words fit into the blanks. Have students pair up to choose suitable words to go into the blanks. Each pair then reads its choices to the others. The entire class can then discuss the students’ choices, compare them to the original words in the passage, and examine how their choices fit in with the original meaning.
Have students identify the theme of a story and support it with information available in the book. This information could be implicitly stated or explicit. Ask students to identify some sentences in the book that support their ideas about the theme. Using these sentences, they can come up with their own sentence stating the theme of the book.