Reading Strands: Understanding Fiction

Reading Strands is a companion book to the award-winning Writing Strands curriculum for homeschoolers. Designed as reference book for parents on teaching literature, Reading Strands teaches how to analyze the four main elements of fiction:

• setting
• characters
• conflict
• resolution

By studying these parts of a story, students can learn how to think critically about any book they will ever read.

Reading Strands shows parents how to use the Socratic method to teach these elements of fiction; parents ask questions that allow the students to come to conclusions on their own about how an author creates each of the elements. Instead of memorizing information, students learn to analyze and understand literature through conversation. The book provides several examples of these conversations to help parents learn what types of questions to ask.

In the back of Reading Strands is a list of recommended books, organized by grade level. These books are available at most libraries.