I was looking through some files today and found this fun activity I have always used with my third graders.  I call it the Story Element Match, but I use it for story elements, main idea, and summarizing.

It’s a basic activity, but kids absolutely LOVE it!  There are header cards for each story element, then the kids sort each card under the headings.  The first time around, most of the kids don’t see the correlation between the cards, but there are 5 story lines that go together as you see below…

After the kids are nice and solid on the story elements, we move on to identifying the main idea of a fiction passage or story.  There are a ton of strategies I use for teaching main idea, but this is a good starting point.  We make an anchor chart like this (or I hang this one up)…

Then, they pair up the cards to write a main idea statement from the paired cards.

I have even had kids come up with extensions to the “story” by writing summaries later in the year.

You can get your FREE set of Story Element Matching Cards by clicking here!