Lesson 6: Plot

"The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see." -Alexandra K. Trenfor

This was one of my student's favorite lessons to this day. To capture their curiosity from the start, I had everyone line up outside the door. I held a stack of papers in my hand and walked the line, explaining the rules of the game we were about to play to the class, stating the classic line that the "floor is lava". I purposely only gathered about ten sheets of paper to ensure that the students wouldn't have enough to make it across the classroom stepping only on the sheets of paper. I was anxious to see what kind of creative ideas they could come up with to solve the problem.

I observed their smiling faces as they leapt from paper to paper, and once the students got about halfway across the room, they had exhausted their supply! They asked me what to do, but I didn't say a word. Mass chaos ensued among the students as they scrambled for last-minute ideas. Many of the students began making ice-skating-like movements, using the paper to slide across the room and attempting to throw the paper back to the other students. Some students began ripping the sheets of paper in half or quarter sections, quadrupling the amount of paper they had access to. A couple of students went so far as to swipe paper from the recycling bin for additional auxiliaries!

Once every student (by some means or another) had made it to the opposite side of the classroom, I continued with the lesson. Since we were already up and moving, I had thought in advance to make plot structure "puzzles" instead of pursuing with the white board demonstration as originally planned. The students separated into groups and used their best recognition to guess which pieces fit where, and I am pleased to say that each group completed the structure correctly! However, I wanted them to be able to remember the plot structure outline easily, so I had them line up by order of their birthdays so we could make a human plot structure! However, this proved to just complicate everything because the kids were worried about being perfect with their order, so it ended up taking way too much time out of the lesson for what was meant to be a simple task. If I could do this lesson again, I would have them just line up normally, and I would give myself a lot of time to "test" them by asking different people to represent the climax, inciting incident, etc. The surrounding students could then adjust themselves in the line structure according to that! <--I hope that all makes sense. Haha.

We discussed the plot structure of the "floor is lava" activity that we had just completed, analyzing many different moments and categorizing them as inciting incident, rising action, or climax as a class. Many of the students had very unique insights as to what problems they had encountered, and how they were able to solve the problems. One of the smallest students in the class, Ruby, mentioned that she had thought that her size would cause her to have a difficult time to cross the classroom because she would have to leap long distances to stand on paper. However, she had soon discovered that her small size was actually an advantage because she was able to step on small pieces of paper much easier than the other students were.

The students grasped the concept of rising action and climax surprisingly easily! They were readily able to identify moments in our activity that would qualify for the descriptions and explain how they felt in those situations. I tried to focus on how these moments made them feel so that they would be able to think more easily about the characters' feelings in their stories.

During the group practice activity, the students were very creative in their decisions about what could go wrong in the activity and what characters could be involved. In one group, when a student had a difficult time doing his homework, a genie appeared to help him! However, when the genie proved to be not much help, the student was left in his trouble!

Students perform their original scene, incorporating the basics of the first half of the plot structure

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Casey Greenwood

BYU Arts Bridge

4^th Grade

UNIT: Playwriting

UNIT OBJECTIVE: Students will demonstrate their ability to write effective stories by writing a play inspired by a stimulus.

LESSON: Plot

LESSON OBJECTIVE: Students will demonstrate their understanding of plot by continuing their stories to incorporate an original plot.

THEATRE ARTS CORE STANDARDS:

Standard 1

Playmaking: The student will plan and improvise plays based on personal experience and heritage, imagination, literature, and history for informal and formal theatre.

Objective 3

Describe and explain plot structure in terms of beginning, middle, climax, and end.

Standard 2

Acting: A student will cooperate, imagine and assume roles, explore personal preferences and meanings, and interact in classroom dramatizations.

MATERIALS NEEDED: 10 sheets of paper, situation papers

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Hook: Clear plenty of space on the floor. Tell the students they must cross the classroom standing only on the sheets of paper that you give to them. Have the students to stand in a line, and give the first student in line ten sheets of paper. As the students try to cross the room, they will find that they have run out of paper, and must come up with a creative way to get all students across the room while only standing on the paper.

Step 1: Transition

Ask questions such as: What made this activity challenging? What was the most difficult part about this activity?

Step 2:  Model

Draw a plot structure on the white board. Select students to write the different levels of plot structure in their proper places, and discuss each one and provide examples as it is written. Ask questions such as: What do you think could go wrong in the story? What events could lead to that problem? For example: The story could be about a boy who wants to buy a new dog. Rising action could include the boy’s lonely feelings at home, discussing wanting a dog with his parents, and traveling to the animal shelter. The climax could include that the animal shelter doesn’t have the breed of dog that he wants. Feeling disappointed, the boy might be begin to leave the animal shelter, when suddenly he hears a dog barking. As he approaches the dog, it jumps up, wanting attention and affection. The boy falls in love, and the family buys the dog.

Step 3: Group Practice

Have the students separate into groups, and provide each group a situation. Students will discuss where the situation could take place, what characters could be involved, what could go wrong in that situation, and what events could lead up to that problem. Students will then create scenes based off of this information and perform them for each other.

Step 4: Individual Practice

Invite the students to pull out the beginning of their story from the previous class. On a separate sheet of paper, have them write down what they want the main problem of the story to be, and what events could lead up to that problem.

Step 5: Assessment

When the students are ready, invite them to continue writing their stories, incorporating the new plot that they have developed.

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LESSON SUPPLEMENTS:

Write the following on strips of paper for the group activity:

Grocery shopping

Doing homework

Playing at recess

Riding the bus

Reading a book

Doing chores

Getting ready for school