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Lesson · Grade 4 · English Language Arts

Genres: What Kind of Story Is This?

  • Grade 4
  • English Language Arts
  • 1 min 26 s
  • British Columbia
  • BC4-EN-02

A short invented passage about a glowing map, a talking dragon and the lost city of Vell is shown plain, beside four genre cards: fantasy, humour, adventure and biography, each with a one-line description. Three clues are then highlighted in the text (magic, an impossible creature, a made-up place), biography is ruled out because none of it really happened, and the passage is labelled "Genre: fantasy", ending on the recap that a story's features tell you its genre.

Concept: Genres: fantasy, humour, adventure, biography

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In one sentence

The question this lesson answers

What kind of story is this?

A genre is a kind of story, and stories in one genre share the same features.

Transcript

What the lesson says

What kind of story is this?

A genre is a kind of story, and stories in one genre share the same features.

Here are four common genres: fantasy, humour, adventure and biography.

Fantasy has magic, made-up places and creatures that could not exist.

Humour is written to make you laugh, with jokes, mix-ups and silly characters.

Adventure follows a risky journey or quest, full of danger and narrow escapes.

A biography tells the true story of a real person's life.

To find the genre, ask what features the story has.

Look for clues: a map glows, and a door opens in a tree. That is magic.

A dragon that speaks is a creature that could not exist.

And the lost city of Vell is a made-up place.

It is not a biography, because none of this really happened.

This story has magic, an impossible creature and a made-up place.

Those are the features of fantasy, so this story's genre is fantasy.

A genre is a kind of story, and its features tell you which kind you are reading.

Curriculum

Where this fits

British Columbia, Grade 4

English Language Arts, Story/text: forms, functions, and genres of textBC4-EN-02

Previous: Narrative, Report or Exposition: The Purpose Picks the FormNext: Text Features: Headings, Captions and Diagrams

British Columbia, Grade 5

English Language Arts, Story/text: forms, functions, and genres of textBC5-EN-03

Previous: Why a Text Was Written: Finding Its FunctionNext: Text Features: Headings, Captions and Diagrams

British Columbia, Grade 6

English Language Arts, Story/text: forms, functions, and genres of textBC6-EN-03

Previous: Why a Text Was Written: Finding Its FunctionNext: Text Features: Headings, Captions and Diagrams

British Columbia, Grade 7

English Language Arts, Story/text: genresBC7-EN-03

Previous: Why a Text Was Written: Finding Its FunctionNext: Text Features: Headings, Captions and Diagrams

This lesson is also listed in Grade 5, Grade 6 and Grade 7.

The outcomes and strands follow the British Columbia curriculum.

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