A Story Elements Game That’s Sure to Engage Your Students

Story Elements are the foundation of our comprehension work with students. If students cannot retell the components of a story, they won’t be able to answer higher level questions about the text. Elementary classrooms from Kindergarten to 5th grade all spend some time throughout the year addressing the elements of a story in some way. Since it’s such a crucial aspect of our literacy instruction, why not make it fun by turning it into a game? Find out about an engaging game that easily works with any fiction text that your students will beg you to play!

What are the 5 Story Elements?

Story Elements help students retell a fiction story that they’ve read. You may hear this commonly referred to as a 5 Finger Retell since there are 5 story elements.

When retelling the story teachers sometimes substitute plot for the resolution. Other teachers may use a 5 finger retell to include: characters, setting, beginning, middle, and end. The components of the story that you include are determined by the age of your students and your current area of focus. If you’ve been working on BME in 1st grade then you’d obviously want to include that for practice; but a 3rd-grade teacher may want to review conflict, resolution, and theme instead. Essentially no matter which terms you use the main goal is retelling the story.

How to Teach Story Elements?

The best way to teach story elements is through your daily read alouds. During this time you can introduce the terms with a story elements anchor chart and discuss them with your students. Typically it is best to introduce one component at a time. Upper elementary students should be able to discuss them all together as it is a review for them.

After introducing the story elements, spend lots of time practicing with them. This can be during small group instruction, literacy centers or independent reading. Students can complete a story elements graphic organizer after reading a fiction story. There are also lots of other engaging tools and activities for story elements practice you can implement!

Story Elements Game

This game is a fun way to practice retelling a story. Students must work together to identify the story elements for a story that they’ve read. It is essentially the same concept as completing a story elements graphic organizer after reading, just in a game format! Typically I play this game with my remediation groups; however, it can also work for a whole class.

Preparing for the Game

Prior to playing the game, you will read an entire story together. Students need to be familiar with the story since they will be asked to retell it using the story elements.

You will want to choose the story elements that you’d like to practice. You will need to print the “Oh Snap” game cards and cards that match the story elements you’ve chosen. You’ll also need to make the chart to display on the board with the story elements listed in columns.

How to Play

1. Display the story elements chart on the board.
2. Place the story elements and “Oh Snap” game cards into a container. It helps to fold them so students can’t see what they are picking.
3. Divide students into teams. Give each team a pack of sticky notes, but every team needs to have a different color.
4. One student from each team will pick a card from the container and take it back to their team. They will return the card to the container after they’ve finished.
5. The teams will work together to write about that component of the story they read.
6. Students must show the teacher their answers. If it is correct, they may place their sticky note under the corresponding column on the board. If it is incorrect, they must take it back to their team and fix it until they get the correct answer.
7. If a team picks an “Oh Snap ME” card they must take down one of their own sticky notes. But if they pull an “Oh Snap YOU” card they may take down another team’s sticky note. If there aren’t any sticky notes to take down, they just put the card back into the container. In order to put a correct sticky note back on the board, the team must pull that story element card out of the container again. At that point they can directly put it back on the board since the teacher has already checked to make sure it was correct.
8. The game is over once one team has a sticky note in EACH column.

Additional Tips

• You may want to provide sentence stems for students to use when writing their answers.
• Set up a system to make sure students on the team take turns picking a card.
• I like to use a desktop trash can with a swing lid. It allows students to reach in without being able to see the card they are picking.
• Remind students that all the teams will have the same answers, so they’ll want to work quietly together as to not give any answers away to the other teams.
• You can also do this to practice Main Idea. For this just write paragraph numbers at the top of the chart and on the cards. Students must write the main idea of each paragraph in a short text they’ve read.

Do you have other fun ways of reviewing story elements with your students? How might you adapt this type of game to work with other skills? Share in the comments below!

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