Standard: K.RL.3 – With prompting and support, identify characters, settings, and major events in a story.
Grade level: Kindergarten
Subject: English Language Arts
Domain: Reading: Literature
Teacher Overview
This standard focuses on helping Kindergarten students identify the basic elements of a story—characters, settings, and major events. Understanding these components is crucial as it lays the foundation for more advanced reading and comprehension skills in later grades. Before tackling this standard, students should be able to listen attentively to a story, recognize basic story elements, and follow a simple narrative.
After mastering this standard, students will be able to describe characters, settings, and events in greater detail and understand the relationships between these elements within more complex narratives.
Common Misconception 1
A common misconception is that students may think characters in a story are real people. This occurs because young children often have difficulty distinguishing between fiction and reality.
Intervention 1
To address this misconception, teachers can use puppets or illustrations to clearly differentiate between story characters and real people. Reinforcing this through repeated practice and visual aids can help solidify the concept.
Common Misconception 2
Another misconception is that students may struggle to identify the setting if it changes throughout the story. This can be confusing because young children often think of the setting as a single, static place.
Intervention 2
Using visual aids like story maps can help students track and identify different settings within a story. Teachers can guide students through the process of mapping out the story’s settings as they change.
Prerequisite Knowledge
Students should have basic listening skills, the ability to follow along with a story, and familiarity with simple story structures.
Subsequent Knowledge
Students will develop the ability to describe characters, settings, and events in greater detail and will begin to understand the relationships between these elements within more complex narratives.
Instructional Activities
- Read a story aloud and ask students to identify the characters and setting.
- Have students draw pictures of the characters and settings from the story.
- Create a story map with students to visualize the major events.
- Use puppets to act out the story, focusing on identifying characters and settings.
