If text features have a lot of vocabulary, literary elements have legions of it. It seems as though every time my students start feeling confident in their understanding of text features, and comfortable with the terms, the very next thing in the scope and sequence is literary elements. Thankfully some are terms they are already familiar with, such as character, setting, genre, and author’s purpose (we have a genre and author’s purpose wall in our classroom), but so many of the terms are new.

​Similar to text features, we generally start our work with these terms by creating a reference for students to use. This time, instead of creating a book, we make foldable notes. The students cut on the solid lines and fold on the dotted (be sure to make extra copies, there’s always at least one student who cuts on the dotted lines). They then glue the top flap down and the back of the foldable to a page in their notebook. There are three different sets in all, for a total of 18 terms. To create the notes, students cut out the definition and example cards I provide, match them to the correct terms, and glue them with the definition on the back of the flap (term) and example under the flap. The final result is a fun set of notes, or glossary of sorts, that they can reference throughout the unit.

Once again, I created a digital version of this activity for our distance learning classroom this year. For this digital reference book (get the free template by clicking the link above or picture), I wanted something different than the text feature version. I realized that unless I had a slide with all of the definitions/examples, that students could cut and paste from, there would be no good way to provide them for students to sort. I decided instead that we would talk through the definitions and examples in class, and type them together. Since we didn’t need as much room for literary elements as text features (no pictures), I didn’t want to dedicate entire slides to just a couple of sentences. Instead, I made each slide resemble what it would look like if the student ​had folded the flap behind the page. I made the first page by listing all of the literary elements in their own boxes. I then copied and pasted that page, removed the first element, and replaced it with a white text box divided into two sections (definition/example). I repeated this process, copying and pasting the first slide, replacing the next element in turn, until all 18 terms had a slide. The final slide is where I put my answer key. Students click on each element and are jumped to the place where they can enter a definition and example for it. Each of the slides also have a “close element” button that will return them to the main slide, where they can select another element. To add the definitions and examples the slides must be in edit mode. After this, the slides can be used in present mode, or published to the web.