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Helping Teachers Make A Difference ® © 2014 Really Good Stuff ® 1-800-366-1920 www.reallygoodstuff.com Made in China #305971 All teaching guides can be found online. Plot’s Peak Level 2 Congratulations on your purchase of Really Good Literacy Center-in-a-Bag™ Plot’s Peak Level 2, a valuable plot-diagram activity. Meeting Common Core State Standards Really Good Stuff Plot’s Peak Level 2 aligns with the following English Language Arts Standards: Craft & Structure Anchor Standard 5 Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. RL.4-5.5 Explain how a series of chapters, scenes, or stanzas fits together to provide the overall structure of a particular story, drama, or poem. This Really Good Stuff product includes: • 5 Two-Sided Story Cards • 25 Arrow Labels • 25 Story Part Cards • 50 Blank Story Part Cards • 1 Plot Diagram Folder Mat • 1 Two-Sided Answer Key Card • 1 Center Task Card • This Really Good Stuff Teaching Guide Story structure is a fairly simple concept, but recognizing the parts of a story takes practice. At earlier levels of literacy, stories have very obvious climactic moments. As students encounter more complex stories at the intermediate levels, they need to revisit and refine this skill. Managing the Center-in-a-Bag • Visit our Web site www.reallygoodstuff.com to download Really Good Stuff Teaching Guides. • Students work with one matching-colored set (e.g., green Story Card, Story Part Cards, and Answer Key) at a time. If there is time they switch to another color. • The Blank Story Part Cards offer a variation. For a greater challenge, remove some or all of the printed Story Part Cards and replace them with blank ones. • Make copies of the Plot’s Peak Reproducible to provide further practice. • Display the Center Task Card. • Demonstrate how to tidy the Center when the activity is complete. • Store the center materials in the bag, and hang it alongside other Centers-in-a-Bag. Introducing Plot’s Peak Practice analyzing story structure using a plot diagram, which is a metaphorical visual aid. Discuss the parts of a story, starting with climax. Like the mountain depicted in the plot diagram, a story has a peak, or highest point. The climax is the most tense, exciting, or important part of a story. The climax might be the moment in which a problem or conflict in the story is at its height. In some stories, the climax is a moment in which tension is finally released or a big change occurs, affecting characters’ situations. Often, the climax takes place near the end of a story; sometimes it is closer to the middle. Students might benefit from identifying a story’s climax before its other parts. The exposition is at the beginning of the story. Exposition means showing. The author is showing who the characters are and providing background and setting for the story. The part of a story that builds up to the climax is the rising action. The characters are becoming more developed. Like the skiers riding the ski lift in the graphic, the reader experiences building excitement or tension. Often, the rising action is a problem starting to present itself. At this point, an involved reader will start to think about where the story is going and how resolution may be found. Similarly, falling action is the part in which the climax has taken place and other aspects of the story are being worked out. The resolution is the ending. Most stories end peacefully, even if the ending is not a happy one. At this point, the author has provided a rounded set of events, and characters have been fully developed. In many stories’ resolutions, the characters and/or the reader has been presented with a lesson or set of lessons. Model the activity for the students. They will first select and read a Story Card and think about which part of the story is the climax. The student places the Climax Arrow Label on this part of the Story Card. The labels help the student keep track of the story parts. A Risky Rescue I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains. Ma was a teacher and Pa worked in lumberyards. There wasn’t much work for Pa by the '60s as logging decreased in the area. I was a teenager then. My parents didn’t earn a lot, but they taught me well. They said to work hard and treat other people like you would treat your own kin, which means treating them like family. Ma called these “good, old-fashioned Appalachian values.” We lived in a rustic one-room cabin on the land of one of Pa’s lumberyard bosses. The place had electricity, but it didn’t work so well. Sometimes the lights were out for several nights in a row. Our landlord lived with his family in a sturdier house just up the hill. It was a modest house, but it sure seemed fancy to me. It had two bedrooms and a big front porch. After school I helped look after the landlord’s three children. The money I earned helped Ma buy food and firewood. The babysitting always tuckered me out. One evening I was watching the kids while their parents went to town. The two oldest, Jeb and Sarah, played jacks on the porch while three-year-old Tommy slept in the back room. When Jeb and Sarah finally went to bed, I wandered to the back room behind the kitchen. I laid down on the couch and fell asleep with my heavy shoes still on. It seemed like I had just closed my eyes when Pa swung open the door and Jeb’s voice hollered from outside. The smell of smoke sent my brain into action. As Pa bounded up the steps, I grabbed my blanket and ran outside. Ma was there, holding a bucket of water. I looked up at the house. Flames poured from the side windows. I realized Jeb was the only child outside. Pa burst out of the house with Sarah in his arms. She was coughing through her cries. I don’t remember thinking about what I should do next. I snatched the bucket from Ma’s hands and shoved my blanket into the water. I threw the wet blanket over my head, wrapped it around me, and ran straight to the bedroom where Tommy slept. I scooped Tommy from his bed and covered us both with the wet blanket. I used the corner of the blanket to cover Tommy’s nose and mouth. When I returned to the hallway, I could feel the soles of my shoes melting with every step. By the time we got out, flames had engulfed the front of the house. Tommy and Sarah had to be taken to the hospital two towns away because they had breathed so much smoke. It was an electrical fire, the landlord told me. He and his wife were very grateful that our family had saved their children’s lives. “Our neighbor,” Pa assured him, “is like our kin.” room behind the ki It seemed like I of smoke sent my a bucket of water. Pa burst out of I don’t remembe the water. I threw t I scooped Tomm d th W Climax
