Why Teaching About Plot in High School is Still Important

We don’t know about you, but we had some questions about teaching about plot as high school teachers. Should we assume students already learned the elements of plot (like, in elementary school) and had been completing plot diagrams for years? Well, you know what they say about assumptions . . . Erring on the side of caution (as we usually do) and thinking students would benefit from a quick review, we decided there was no harm in starting the semester by reteaching (or teaching) plot and the parts of speech (but that’s another blog post entirely).

Over the years, we came to see value in teaching about plot, if only because it ensured all our students had the same foundational knowledge. While an understanding of these basic elements is not something we focus on in high school literary analysis, students who aren’t familiar with it will struggle with what we do focus on in high school literary analysis.

If you’re a regular reader of the blog (thank you), you’ll recognize a pattern here: we spent quite a few years bumbling along with plot diagram worksheets and stale short stories recommended by our textbook publishers for teaching plot, and then, possibly out of boredom or the realization that “Hey, we can do this better,” we started to get some ideas about how to teach plot meaningfully to a high school audience. Teaching about plot and having your students complete the occasional plot diagram has value at the high school level, but it’s necessary to keep a few things in mind.

Things to Remember When Teaching About Plot in High School

Why Is It Worth Teaching about Plot?

Part of our job as English teachers is to fill our students’ toolboxes with the knowledge and skills they need in order to succeed in high school and college English classes, and literary terms related to plot are tools our students need. Additionally, when students complete a plot diagram meaningfully, they have a useful tool for reviewing a text and helping them discern which details help to reveal the meaning of important parts of the text, like theme or the way in which an important character changes.

As proficient students of English ourselves (and as holders of the answer keys), we know the way a story’s central conflict is resolved is a neon arrow that points toward a work’s theme, and the climax is often the point in a story or a novel where dynamic characters demonstrate change (even if it’s been building all along), but our students, even the good ones, don’t always know this from elementary or even middle school. In high school, we’re supercharging our understanding of plot and using a basic plot diagram to discover and discuss important and nuanced elements of texts.

How Do I Move My Students Beyond Pure Plot Summary?

One of the reasons we weren’t sure teaching about plot was worth it is that student plot diagrams often included a haphazard list of events from the story rather than demonstrating an actual progression from conflict to climax. The climax was often misidentified, and the complications, or rising action, was usually just a miscellaneous list of events, usually quite focused on what happened at the very beginning of the text, that may or may not have been significant. As we changed the way we described these terms for students, it helped us guide them toward producing more meaningful work and developing more sophisticated ideas.

Exposition

For the exposition part of the plot diagram, we asked students to focus less on what happens and more on how the beginning of the text establishes the setting, characters, and (most importantly) conflict. Not only did this better help them navigate the fuzzy boundary between exposition and complications/rising action, it also provided them with a focus as they worked to track the parts that followed.

Climax

For the climax (yep, we know we’re out of order here, but stick with us) part of the plot diagram, we emphasized that this was the one part of the plot diagram that had one correct answer, and that answer was almost at the end of the text. Thanks to plot diagrams that place the climax in the middle of a symmetric mountain, many students thought any exciting event could be the climax. But if Darcy’s first (terrible) proposal is the climax, then why would we keep reading the second half of the book?

We also encouraged students to find the climax immediately after identifying the exposition: if they had just identified the conflict, then it was easier to identify the moment in which the conflict reaches its peak, demanding to be solved. This is one reason it’s important to make this an activity that is completed after a first read (or during a second read): we don’t know the significance of events until after we’ve read the whole story.

Complications/Rising Action

When it comes to the complications/rising action, it’s tempting for students to choose a miscellaneous handful of events, and we can’t really fault them when they do so since, yes, those things happened, but when the events in this part of the plot diagram aren’t chosen thoughtfully, the tool becomes significantly less helpful.

By having students identify the exposition and climax first, we could then ask them to identify the five (or any other number) events that were most significant in moving from the exposition to the climax. This helped students focus on the most important details instead of choosing events randomly.

Resolution

Finally, for the resolution of the plot diagram, we reminded students that, unless it was a cliffhanger, a movie with a huge battle scene at the climax didn’t usually just . . . end. There are funerals to attend, a Shire to return to, weddings to celebrate. Even though the climax should be near the end of the story, there’s usually something that follows, even if it’s just the revelation that everyone lived (or didn’t live) happily ever after.

What Are Some Effective Activities I Can Use When Teaching Plot?

Start with short films or TV episodes (the more self-contained the episode, the better) before moving on to grade-level texts. This allows students to master the skill with a less threatening “text” so they are more confident when they take on the bigger challenge.

When introducing plot to our standard-level students, especially when those students were struggling with the concept, we selected the events ahead of time and created manipulatives students could move around to place in the right part of the plot diagram. Students organized the events on their own, and then we reviewed (and reorganized as needed) on the whiteboard or a digital plot diagram.

We had our AP Literature students complete a flip book activity at the end of each novel or play we read, and since we wanted them to be able to use it as a review tool before the AP exam in May, we had them include a plot diagram on one of the pages. Instead of being an end in itself, it was part of what made up their analysis of the novel or play, and because the pages had to relate to the theme they selected, they learned to become more thoughtful in their selection of events.

It is especially helpful in PreAP or AP courses to focus on short stories that deviate from traditional plot structures. When a story follows a traditional plot structure, the structure isn’t really worth discussing because it doesn’t contribute much to the story’s theme. But when a story deviates from readers’ expectations, we can discuss why a writer might have chosen to do so and the effect that deviation has on our experience of the story, understanding of the characters, and, potentially, the theme. Students have the opportunity to see that the traditional plot diagram becomes something authors can play with rather than an end in itself.

What struggles are you experiencing when you try to figure out how to teach plot? What activities and stories have you found particularly effective when teaching about plot? Reach out to us at [email protected] or on Instagram @threeheads.works to share or to get more details about any of the ideas we’ve shared here.