You can usually feel when a story is still setting things up and when it has properly started. Today you name that shape: exposition and early rising action, and how setting pushes what happens.
Your anchor text is the novel or short text this class chose and has been reading in this unit. Have that book open on your desk, plus any notes from the cover and openings work, before you move on. If you do not have the book or those notes yet, ask your teacher for the class anchor title and the pages you are using today before you move on.
You will practise on a short extract written for this lesson, then build one Plot and Setting Map of your anchor text so far: a short analytical piece for your Communication Portfolio that shows how place shapes early events.
Use these terms when you map a story:
| Term | What it means for you | Real example |
|---|---|---|
| Exposition | Your map's first stretch: people, place, and the situation before trouble builds | A new starter on her first shift in a small cafe, the manager showing her the till |
| Rising action | What shifts so the reader leans forward | A regular sends his order back, just after the manager has gone home |
| Setting | Mark details that push or block a character | A cafe so small that every customer hears every mistake |
| Plot structure | Today you only need exposition and early rising action | First shift at the till, then the complaint, then she has to handle it alone |
Worked example from a short scene written for this lesson: "The cafe was so small that the whole queue could hear the till beep, and every mistake that came after it." That one line puts her in a public, cramped space where nothing can be hidden. The setting already makes a mistake louder and help further away, before any new event arrives.
Below are early moments from a short journey extract written for this lesson (not your anchor text). Drag each card into Exposition or Rising action. If one could sit in either place, put it down and be ready to say why.
This sort is practice only. The only piece you file is the Plot and Setting Map in the next step.
This is the one piece for your Communication Portfolio. The marker and the template below are one path, not two assignments: the marker feeds the map; the completed template is what you file.
1. Type or paste a short stretch (a few sentences is enough) from your anchor text so far into the marker. A few sentences are enough: you are mapping how setting shapes early events, not retyping the novel.
2. Make four marks in total. Use whichever labels fit (you do not need all four label types). Every mark needs a short reason on how that detail shapes the plot (pushes a character, blocks them, or changes the feel of the scene).
3. Copy those marks straight into the Setting annotations box of the template, then finish exposition, early rising action, and characters introduced so far in the same template. That filled template is your Plot and Setting Map.
4. Save once as m1_l14_plot_setting_map_<your-initials> in your portfolio folder.
Talk this through with the person beside you for about two minutes:
Optional, in your own time later: if you want a longer thought, write it in your own Reflective Journal (not on this page). Think of a real place you know (bus, kitchen, pitch, shop floor, GAA changing room). How did that place change a conversation or a decision?
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