Story Map
Overview
Providing a story map ahead of time or having students create a map during or after reading helps learners understand and expand their Genre Knowledge. A story map visually highlights and organizes important elements of a text to support deeper reading comprehension.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
At 3:40, watch how these sixth grade teachers introduce the story map and how it can support comprehending and remembering the story. The teachers orient the students to the important details of the story like characters, setting, problem, and solution.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
At 3:50, see how a digital product, such as Kidspiration, can allow learners to create complex story maps to visualize and enhance their learning. Through the creation process, learners sort and organize information from a text into meaning with a dynamic graphic organizer.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More External Memory Aids Strategies
Easy access to high frequency words promotes sight word recognition as students see the words repeatedly.
Rhyming, alliteration, and other sound devices reinforce language development by activating the mental processes that promote memory.
A mnemonic device is a creative way to support memory for new information using connections to current knowledge, for example by creating visuals, acronyms, or rhymes.
Cards with strategies for managing emotions help students remember how to act when faced with strong feelings.
Timers help students learn how to self-pace and transition.
A word wall helps build Vocabulary for reading fluidity.
