Sequencing events in a story can be difficult for students. This is one of my favorite lessons to teach because it really engages my students. It makes them think about how they would record the events of the story if they were describing it to others.
Anchor charts are so crucial to students’ understanding of a lesson. I love using them and my students love having them to refer to. With this lesson, my students helped me come up with transition words for first, next, then and last. We had some books out and students looked through them to find some of these words/phrases. Then we made a picture sequence along the bottom.
After our anchor chart, we partnered up to read some fairytales (most of them were fractured fairytales). Students were working hard to think about what happened first, next, then and last.
After students finished their story, they used a graphic organizer to organize the events in the story. Once they had their events figured out, they wrote them down on sentence strips.
When the partner groups were finished writing out their sequence cards, they mixed them all up. Students went around the classroom and tried to put the events from the story in the correct order. They could use the book {only if it was absolutely necessary}. They would then call on the creators to see if there was an error. If there was an error, they got to BUZZ {insert a super loud gameshow like buzzing sound} the kiddo that was trying to solve. If they got it right, the creators had to cheer for them and then remix the sequence cards for the next person.
We had 10 different sequenced fairytale puzzles going on all at the same time. It was so much fun listening to the buzzing and cheering. All of my students were engaged and LOVING the lesson. You could easily do any short story, a chapter book or a story from your reading series with this same idea! Want the graphic organizer freebie? Click here to download it!