A second grader should spend a great deal of her time with books. Make sure you share a story with your class every day and give students the opportunity to explore different texts. The ReadWriteThink website recommends using fairy tales that students are familiar with to explain the way a story is structured, pointing out the beginning, the build up, the problem and the way the problem is resolved. If you do this each time you share a story, and encourage students to look for this structure in other stories, your class will soon develop an understanding and awareness of story structure.
This activity also works well with fairy tales. When you have shared a particular story with your class several times, write the main events of the story onto strips of paper. It is a good idea to laminate these strips. Divide your class into groups and give each group a strip of paper. The class then has to organize themselves into the correct order of the story. Try not to intervene. When the class has decided the strips are in the correct order, read out the strips to check. You can differentiate this activity by splitting your class into ability groups and giving each group all the strips they need for a particular story that they then organize into the correct order.
After sharing a story with your class several times, split the class into groups. Give each group a section of the story; one group has the beginning, one has the build up, another has the problem, another the resolution and finally one group has the ending. Each group acts the section they have been given. Give the groups plenty of time to practice; they may need your help. When everyone is ready, have each group act out their section in order so that the whole story is acted out.
When it comes to writing her own stories, a second grader will need help to structure her writing. Give her lots of different strategies to use that are engaging and creative. For example, try drawing story maps, using pictures to show the way in which the story will happen. Make the map relevant to the story; try a treasure map for a pirate adventure or a map of a jungle for an explorer's tale. Story hills are another creative way to plan story structure. Have your student draw a hill or mountain on a large sheet of paper. The beginning of the story is at the foot of the hill. As the story progresses it moves up the hill, with the problem at the very top. As the problem is resolved and the story ends, it moves down the other side of the hill or mountain. Story boards, in which a picture is drawn for each stage of the story, also help second graders with story structure.