Characters, settings, and events
Identify characters, settings, and major events in stories; become familiar with key stories, fairy tales, and traditional tales and retell them with key details in sequence
What a learner can do afterwards
- Name the main characters in a story
- Describe where and when a story takes place
- Retell a familiar story including beginning, middle, and end events
1 · Read
Characters are who a story is about. They can be people or animals. In a made-up story, a toy or a tree can be a character too if it thinks, talks, or acts like a person.
The setting is where and when a story happens. Look for place words, like beach, and time words, like night. A clue can help too. The sun going down can tell you it is the end of the day.
Events are what happens in a story. To retell what happened, put the events in order: beginning, middle, end. Say what happened first, next, and last.
Here is a short version of Little Red Riding Hood. Red walks through the woods to Grandma's house. The wolf gets there first and pretends to be Grandma. A hunter helps Red and Grandma. Red, Grandma, the wolf, and the hunter are characters. The woods and Grandma's house are places in the setting. Walking, pretending, and helping are events.
When you retell a story, say the characters and the setting. Then tell what happened first, next, and last.
A story can move to a new setting. For each part, find where and when it happens. Keep each place with its own time. Then tell the settings in story order.
Every story has characters, a setting, and events that happen in order.
Four original stories and reading notes by the dataset authors.
2 · Watch
Take it off screen
Where it sits
Where this leads
24 questions wait behind this lesson, each with its answer explained. Every answer feeds the sky: stars light as they are learned, and dim when it is time to come back.