10 Flow Charts
Courtney Denmark
Strategy Overview:
- A subset of story mapping, flow charts show how the elements of a story work together. The setting and the characters lead to the problem, which leads to the important events, which leads to the outcome.
- It is important because students need to understand how things work together within the texts that they are reading.
- Flow charts can be used in the classroom before, during, and after reading. They can be pre-taught to allow students to have a guide of what they are looking for while reading. This can increase comprehension skills because students are able to essentially pre-read important aspects of the text. Comprehension success increases when students know what they are looking for.
Strategy in Action
Students will be given a flow chart that goes along with a story selected for their reading time that day (either a read aloud, small group reading, or independent reading). As students are listening to/reading the text, they will fill out the flowchart. Once the story is completed, students will get in small groups and share what their understandings of the story. they got out of the story.
Related Resources:
Geva, E. (1983). Facilitating reading comprehension through flowcharting. Reading Research Quarterly, 18, 384-405. https://doi.org/10.2307/747375
