I find that starting the school year with a short story unit that focuses on the elements of fiction is the best starting point to give my students the building blocks they need to be successful in my English classes. In the first lesson, I explain types of plot and how a plot diagram is structured – check out this freebie to use with your students!
While the rest of the unit is full of short stories, I enjoy using video storytelling in this first lesson to help ease my students into the process of analyzing texts, and provide different mediums for students to engage with. After explaining the different parts of the plot diagram, I play a video that tells a story and instruct students to watch and record each part of the plot in a blank diagram.
Here are five video storytelling options to use when teaching the plot diagram.