Comprehension Involves More Than Just the Beginning-Middle-End of a Story

MindWing’s Episode Organizer Poster – Explicit & Systematic

This is a MindWing Concepts Map of the components of a story taking into consideration “story grammar.” It is called “The SGM^® Episode Organizer.” The story grammar components, making up the beginning/middle/end of a story are shown as icons. The Character, Setting, Kick-off (problem or excitement), Feeling and Plan are in the beginning. The actions (attempts) to carry out the plan make up the middle and the Consequence and resolution make up the end.

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Make the contrast between the traditional Beginning/Middle/End map and this one evident to the participants.

You may want to tell the participants that such an iconic map (and the three dimensional tool) are called “non-linguistic representations” of language.

Marzano in his classic text entitled Classroom Instruction that Works, notes that non-linguistic representations (along with compare/contrast, setting of objectives and provision of feedback), raise achievement when intentionally taught and used consistently.