We are about to start our Fiction unit in 3rd grade where I teach. I always find that kids love fiction much more than non-fiction--probably because it is more imaginative. Fiction is fun to teach as well! There are so many wonderful books to use with fiction units! Here are a few we use to introduce (or reintroduce) the students to fiction! We use many more books, of course, but these are some of my favorites! They are full of wonderful characters, great changes with the characters and other amazing uses of the fiction story elements. We always start with an anchor chart--explaining what a Fiction book is! Here is an example: Fiction books have many different parts (elements)--Here is an anchor chart that I found on pinterest, it shows the basic story elements! We have our students create one of these to glue in their reading spiral notebook! I also love this page for the kids to put in their notebook! It is an easy way to remember that the elements are all part of the big "fiction" picture. Here is a link to it! After we do the initial teach of fiction and the different elements, we have students practice all year through responses and graphic organizers. The more they are familiar with the different story elements, the more comfortable they are answering questions about them. Here are a few of the graphic organizers and links to print them--some are younger level (for differentiation) and some are on grade level. Story Map-1st Grade Response I haven't made this yet--but I love it! Story Map--Any Grade! (Take out Theme for lower grades!) I have used this graphic organizer for enrichment activity before--the kids really enjoy it! Or they can use a friend instead of themselves. (Nice words only though!) :) Another great enrichment (or even whole group if you have them time) activity is to create a foldable with the different fiction elements. We are going to do this at the end of our unit--so I don't have any pictures yet...but I know the kids will love it! We will use this tool to assess the student's learning of fiction elements. The students will create the foldable--label it with the different parts, then fill in the parts from a book we have already read in class. Learning made fun! Yay! :) Here is one last resource that I hope you will enjoy! Our principal is huge into technology--which is great! He is in the process of trying to get an ipad in every classroom. The process is slow because they are expensive--but I believe there are at about 20 or so on the campus now, not too shabby! I do not have a school one, because I have a personal one (no need to have two.) But, this is a free educational ipad app called Toontasic! It has a lot of different features, but one thing you can do is create your own story map--and create your own characters, problems, and solutions for the characters. This is new for me...but looks like FUN for the kids! I am going to try it out next week with my kids! As you have noticed--character is a huge part of fiction so we actually teach those two concepts in the same week! We try to tie it all in together. There are a TON of resources out there...too many to list. I hope this helps you in your classroom though! I always believe that the more resources you have...the less likely the kids will get bored. :) Have a great weekend!