Use this strategy to help students identify and write the literary elements. By using the literary elements students are better able to understand the story. 

Genre: Realistic Fiction 
Characters: Max, his brothers 
Setting: Max’s house (his room) 
Problem: Max wants to collect something but he doesn’t know what. 
Solution: Max decides to collect words and he writes stories with his brothers. 
Theme: Cooperation

Use “Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then” to teach beginning summarization. This book lends itself easily for students to be able to identify each part to write their summary.

Somebody (the main character) (Max) 
Wanted (what does the character want) (wanted to collect something) 
But (the problem in the story) (but he couldn’t think of what to collect) 
So (the solution in the story) (so he decided to collect words)

Then (what happens at the end) (then Max and his brothers used the words in Max’s collection to write stories together)

Possible words include: collect (collection, collected, collector), admired, slithered, rapidly, darted, arranged, thought