story elements homework

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Story Elements Worksheets

Every story has basic components: characters, setting, plot, theme, and conflict. These elements answer the basic questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? and How? By understanding each of these components, students are better able to analyze and appreciate the author’s work. You’ll find our story elements worksheets listed below. Click on the title to view, download, or print the PDF. You may use them for free at home or in class. Be sure to check out all of our reading worksheets . If you're looking for more activities, check out www.readingvine.com's story elements reading passages .

Aesop: Put the Events in Order

Aesop was a Greek writer who wrote stories called fables. A fable is a story that gives a lesson at the end. Students read through a fable and put the events in order.

Plot Actions Helper

Starting at the top of the castle, students write the first action in the story. Below that they write the second action, then the third, and then the fourth.

Who Is a Character?

In this activity, students read the sentence and then circle the word that describes the character.

Build a Plot: Connect the Paragraphs

This worksheet includes the opening of a story and the end of a story. Students decide what the problem is, then what the steps, or plot actions, should be to link the beginning of the story with the end.

Build a Plot: Write the Steps

Students read the opening and ending of a story, and decide what the problem is, then what the steps, or plot actions, should be to link the beginning of the story with the end.

Put the Plot in Order

The teacher cuts out each plot action card and mixes them up. The student puts the cards in the correct order.

Story Elements Form

This is a more detailed story elements form template that includes boxes for character, setting, theme, problem, solution and plot/actions.

Story Elements Helper

Thisis a helpful template for elementary school students. It provides a box for different story elements like character, setting, plot and theme.

Story Elements: Problem and Solution

A story element activity that asks students to read short passages and write down the problem and the solution.

Story Elements: What’s the Setting?

In this story elements worksheet for elementary school grades, students read the passages and write the setting.

Using Story Elements: Plan a Story

Planning a story can be tough. This activity helps students break things down so that it’s easier to envision and write the story. A great beginning writing activity for 3rd – 5th graders.

Discovering the Elements of the Story

This activity asks students to read a short passage in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and asking several story element questions.

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• Story Structure Worksheets

Many stories have a plot structure that we can graph. It looks like a triangle. A conflict is introduced, tension rises, a major change occurs. This major change is called the climax. After the climax the tension falls. The protagonist, or main character, may face a final moment of suspense. Then the story is resolved.

This page features a bunch of little stories that I wrote to help teach students story structure. These are concise little tales that can be read in a few minutes and easily graphed on the story structure triangle. They will give students the ground work to understand how story structure affects momentum and mood. Plot structure can be more complicated than a simple triangle, but these stories are simple. I hope that these free story structure worksheets will help students learn to identify narrative structure.

Story Structure Common Core State Standards

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can you add more story structures sheets

Have you seen these story structure activities ? They are similar to the ones on this page.

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Story Elements

Story elements are the ingredients of a good story. These printable prompts, response activities, worksheets, and text-dependent questions build understanding of story elements and their effect on the reader’s experience.

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A blog filled with ideas for making teaching and learning fun for students in kindergarten and 1st grade

Free Story Elements Graphic Organizers and Worksheets for Kids

Understanding story elements is a great way to help students improve their reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is vital in reading development. It is beneficial for students to have a good grasp of story elements from a young age.  Teaching with story elements graphic organizers in Kindergarten really helps students focus on characters, setting, BME (beginning, middle, and end), conflict, and resolution.  Introducing these concepts early on will help students grow as readers. They will put these building blocks together to better understand the plot, theme, main idea, author’s purpose, and more.

Story Elements Anchor Charts

There are so many ways to teach story elements, but I always find that students show the highest level of interest and success when they are hands-on and interacting with the story.  We love to use story elements graphic organizers, hands-on worksheets, songs, and anchor charts.  When using anchor charts, we work together to create big ones as a class but we also use smaller versions for reference around the room once the large ones come down.

* Note that the story used in each of these anchor charts is The Princess and the Frog.  They will go perfectly with the FREE resource below. *

Story Elements Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers are another great visual for students to record their findings from the stories they read.  I love this flappy foldable because it can be used for any story and it shows student understanding of the text. Bonus: It is fun to create and complete!

Story Elements Songs

I also love teaching through music. I created three short songs to help my students remember how to find the setting, characters, conflict, and resolution in a story.  They learn the songs quickly and they help as a quick mental reference.  These songs, as well as numerous other materials including short story passages, can be found in my story elements resource.  This resource has everything you need to get your little ones engaged in the key elements of a story.

Free Story Elements Graphic Organizers and Worksheets

I pulled some of my favorite graphic organizers and pages from this story elements resource to create this free resource for you. I made them specific to the tale of The Princess and the Frog or The Frog Prince.  It includes a short story with comprehension questions and several other ways for students to identify the story elements from this tale.  

I hope you enjoy these fun story elements resources!  Thank you for stopping by!

Lindsay Keegan

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Character, setting & plot worksheets

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Beyond Story Elements: Encouraging your students to think critically about elements of the text

By Mary Montero

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Teaching and analyzing story elements is a critical part of developing students’ comprehension skills. You probably talk about the setting, the characters, the problem and solution, and eventually the theme. I’ve talked before about the importance of teaching students to identify and interpret story elements, which you can read HERE . But how can we take a basic reading of a text and make it truly dynamic and meaningful, especially in the upper grades? 

Here are four ways to bring your reading to the next level and encourage students to think critically about elements of the text.

#1 Go Beyond the Basics of Setting

We all know talking about the setting of a text is important. If you tell me a story based in 2020 New York vs. 2020 South Dakota or even 1910 New York, you’re talking about two very different worlds! The differences in setting — both time and place — are a critical part of analyzing stories. Help your students think critically about the setting of the text by talking about what it’s like to live there, what makes it unique, and ultimately, how the time period (or time of year) impacts the story and how it’s told.

This is a great time for your students to dive deeper into a setting other than one they are familiar with and incorporate the study of other cultures into your classroom. I almost ALWAYS print out relevant pictures for students to study before we begin a novel… this helps them learn (and infer) so much about the setting, the characters, etc. I do this for both fictional and informational books. 

Further, I LOVE doing a sort of positive and negative words to describe a setting. You can see how we did it here!

Go Deeper Questions for Setting: 

• How does the setting impact the way the story is told?
• How would the story be different if the setting were changed?
• Why do you think the author chose this particular setting?
• About how much time passes from the beginning to the end of the story?

 #2 Dive into Characters’ Lives

Talking about characters being static and dynamic is one thing, but every character has a past, a present, and a future that drives them in one way or another. Talk about WHO characters are by assigning each group a specific character to follow and analyze their actions. Using graphic organizers or reading journals, you can have your students talk about the characters’ motivations, goals, strengths, and weaknesses. This post has more examples for studying characters or this post has a free character project that works with any novel . Then you help them analyze the text even deeper by having them draw out and analyze important quotes for their character.

When your students get to know the characters better, they have a more critical eye for the antagonist and the protagonist as well as their motivations. They can also see what motivates the antagonist and may even see the protagonist isn’t always a good person.

Go Deeper Questions for Characters:

• Analyze the differences in the actions between the protagonist and the antagonist. 
• What is the general mood of the main characters?
• How would the story be different if it were told from a different character’s point of view?
• Imagine what parts of the main characters’ lives are left out of the story. What inferences can you make about them?
• How did the main character’s traits, actions, and motivations impact the way they solved the main problem in the story?
• What conflicts (aside from the main conflict) arise that give you a glimpse into the character’s traits?

To really help your students go deeper with character study, this Character Study Task Card Bundle has 140 differentiated character study task cards. The cards in this bundle cover character traits using both text and pictures, character feelings, inferring character traits, how and why characters change over time, and character conflict.

 #3 Analyze the Theme, Topic, and Central Idea

I have blogged extensively about teaching theme and comparing the theme to the main idea of a story, which you can view HERE . There’s so much more we can do with theme, though!

When students identify the theme of a story, it’s important to make it count. Challenge your students to explain how they know what the theme is and how they can apply it to their own lives. To go even deeper, challenge groups of students to find a song, poem, movie, or story that also exemplifies that theme. This helps students see the purpose behind the work of finding a theme in the text, and it can be great for character building as well. 

Go Deeper Questions for Theme:

• Identify passages that exemplify the theme.
• Are there any passages or characters that don’t match the theme of the story as a whole?
• Consider how the theme would have changed if a character’s traits or actions were different.
• How does the theme of the story help you determine the author’s purpose?

 #4 Connect the Dots to Make Meaning of Story Elements 

One way to get more out of a story is to make connections between the theme, characters, and plot of a story. 

Of course, I always have my students make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections. When we make connections, we are always specific and ALWAYS explain HOW the two different pieces are connected. By making connections, you help students get a better idea as to what they are talking about because they connect with something they already understand. I take this further by having students make connections between the characters in the story and the theme, the setting of the story and the character’s actions, etc.

Go Deeper Tasks for Making Connections:

• Connect the story to another story you’ve read. Compare the themes, characters, settings, etc.
• How are the characters’ traits and actions connected to the theme/setting/plot of the story?

Tie It All Together

Your students will absolutely love this story elements flipbook , and you will love the rigor it provides! On the right-hand side of each section, there is a carefully crafted, high-interest story that unfolds over the course of five parts. Within each part of the story, there is a specific set of story elements. They each have their own problem/solution, setting, etc.

On the left side of each section of the flipbook, students identify the story elements from the specific story section they are reading and answer three story elements-based questions.

All five parts go together to tell one long tale. Students should complete the entire resource over the course of several days.

For more practice, these story elements reading response task cards work with any book and are perfect for small groups, guided instruction, or independent work to review story elements.

Mary Montero

I’m so glad you are here. I’m a current gifted and talented teacher in a small town in Colorado, and I’ve been in education since 2009. My passion (other than my family and cookies) is for making teachers’ lives easier and classrooms more engaging.

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Stellar Teaching Co.

Engaging Resources for Teaching Literacy

Fiction Story Elements Resource Bundle

Help your students learn all about story elements and how to read and understand fictional texts. This bundle includes anchor charts, graphic organizers, reading task cards and word wall cards that will help you effectively teach your fiction unit.

Filed Under: $10 and up , 3rd , 4th , 5th , Anchor Charts and Posters , Bundles , Homeschooler , Lesson Plans , Literacy Center Ideas , Printables , Reading , Reading Passages , Reading Task Cards , Small Group Lessons , Text Structure , Worksheets

More about this resource

Check out each individual resource included to learn more about that product.

What’s Included?

Story Elements Anchor Charts  –  These 17 elements of anchor charts are a great addition to your interactive reader’s notebook. This poster set will help you teach your students all about story elements and plot structure. Students can glue the anchor charts in their journal for quick and easy reference while they are independently reading and you can display them in your classroom as part of a focus wall or classroom display

Story Elements Task Cards  –  Story elements are such an important concept to teach students when they are learning how to comprehend and enjoy fictional texts… but our instruction should go beyond just identifying what each story element is. These reading comprehension task cards will help your students identify, connect, and explain the impact of each story element on the story. They are fun and engaging and students will enjoy reading the short stories.

Print Graphic Organizers  –  These reading response graphic organizers are an awesome tool to incorporate into your reader’s workshop. Each reading response worksheet will help students improve their reading comprehension when it comes to fiction texts. The graphic organizers are ideal for students in grades 3-5 and can easily be incorporated into your guided reading lessons, strategy lessons, independent reading time, or be used as homework.

Fiction Word Wall Cards  –  Teaching students academic language is so important. There are a TON of terms that students need to know when it comes to reading. These 33 reading fiction word wall cards will help your students remember all the terms necessary to be able to discuss and talk about fiction texts.

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EL Education Curriculum

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• ELA 2019 G7:M3:U2:L2

Close Read: “His Motto,” Part I

In this lesson, daily learning targets, ongoing assessment.

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Materials from previous lessons, new materials, closing & assessments, you are here:.

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Focus Standards:  These are the standards the instruction addresses.

• RL.7.3, RL.7.6

Supporting Standards:  These are the standards that are incidental—no direct instruction in this lesson, but practice of these standards occurs as a result of addressing the focus standards.

• RL.7.2, RL.7.4, L.7.4, L.7.5
• I can explain how the setting shapes the characters and plot in "His Motto." ( RL.7.3 )
• I can identify the points of view of Durmond, Hilton, and the "youth" in "His Motto." ( RL.7.6 )
• I can explain how an author develops and contrasts the points of view of Durmond, Hilton, and the "youth" in "His Motto." ( RL.7.6 )
• Opening A: Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 2 ( RL.7.4 )
• Work Time A: "His Motto" Story Elements note-catcher ( RL.7.3, RL.7.6 )
• Ensure that there is a copy of Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 2 at each student's workspace.
• Post the learning targets and applicable anchor charts (see Materials list).

Tech and Multimedia

• Continue to use the technology tools recommended throughout previous modules to create anchor charts to share with families; to record students as they participate in discussions and protocols to review with students later and to share with families; and for students to listen to and annotate text, record ideas on note-catchers, and word-process writing.

Supports guided in part by CA ELD Standards 7.I.A.1, 7.I.B.5, 7.I.B.6, and 7.I.C.10.

Important Points in the Lesson Itself

• To support ELLs, this lesson includes a close read of the first part of the short story "His Motto." The close read is teacher-led and ensures that all students can closely analyze and better comprehend the story.
• ELLs may find it challenging to answer the text-dependent questions throughout the close read. If possible, display the questions and allow longer think-time for ELLs to formulate their responses and discuss them with a partner before sharing out. Doing so will increase their confidence, comprehension, and language use abilities.
• prognostications (A)

(A): Academic Vocabulary

(DS): Domain-Specific Vocabulary

• Academic word wall (one for display; from Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 1, Opening A)
• Close Readers Do These Things anchor chart (one for display; from Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 4, Opening A)
• Work to Become Effective Learners anchor chart (one for display; from Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 5, Work Time A)
• Harlem Renaissance Themes anchor chart (one for display; from Module 3, Unit 1, Lesson 3, Closing and Assessment A)
• Vocabulary log (one per student; from Module 1, Unit 1, Lesson 2, Opening A)
• "His Motto" (text; one per student; from Module 3, Unit 2, Lesson 1, Closing and Assessment A)
• Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 2 (example for teacher reference)
• Close Reading Guide: "His Motto," Part I (for teacher reference)
• Story Elements: "His Motto," Part I note-catcher (example for teacher reference)  
• Harlem Renaissance Themes anchor chart (example for teacher reference)
• Homework: Answer Questions: "His Motto," Part I (answers for teacher reference) (see Homework Resources)
• Entrance Ticket: Unit 2, Lesson 2 (one per student)
• Story Elements: “His Motto,” Part I note-catcher (one per student)
• Story Elements: “His Motto,” Part I note-catcher ▲
• Homework: Answer Questions: “His Motto,” Part I (one per student; see Homework Resources)
• Homework: Answer Questions: “His Motto,” Part I ▲

Each unit in the 6-8 Language Arts Curriculum has two standards-based assessments built in, one mid-unit assessment and one end of unit assessment. The module concludes with a performance task at the end of Unit 3 to synthesize students' understanding of what they accomplished through supported, standards-based writing.

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R ichard Childress Racing driver Kyle Busch's wife Samantha Busch recently shared a hilarious of her helping their son Brexton with his homework.

In the clip, Brexton can be seen working on his homework, while Samantha uses her phone sitting next to him. The video follows the popular trend that has been going on Instagram and was captioned:

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Brexton Busch has followed in his father's footsteps and has raced since 2020 in different junior racing series. He has won more than 30 times at 11 different tracks.

He recently won at the INEX Winter Nationals at Citrus County Speedway earlier in February. He continues to take part in the series, and regularly posts updates on his social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram.

He also had the opportunity to sit in a NASCAR challenger in March when 2021 Cup Series Champion Kyle Larson gave him a seat in his #5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.

Kyle Busch's son Brexton's hilarious outtake after sitting in Kyle Larson's Chevy

During the weekend at the Circuit of The Americas earlier in March, Kyle Busch was accompanied by Brexton in the event.

Brexton also had the chance to get in Kyle Larson's #5 Chevy. Since Larson stands at 5'6", his car seat is adjusted accordingly. Finding it comfortable while driving, the eight-year-old mentioned on social media that he fit perfectly in the car.

"I can fit and mash the gas in this Kyle's seat😉 Thanks for letting me hop in @KyleLarsonRacin👊🏻"

Kyle Busch finished that race in ninth place, his second-best finish in the season so far. He repeated the result in Texas earlier.

He stands 16th in the Cup Series championship without any stage win and with 217 points, having led 63 laps. Despite his performance in the Cup Series, he performed better in the four races he took part in the CRAFTSMAN Truck Series. He won two, including one at Texas, and finished second in Bristol.

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Understanding what platform engineering is and is not.

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Paul Stovell is cofounder and CEO of Octopus Deploy .

Platform engineering is a growing practice within technology organizations, pivotal in managing application development and delivery complexity. Gartner states , "By 2026, 80% of software engineering organizations will establish platform teams as internal providers of reusable services, components and tools for application delivery."

It encompasses a broad spectrum of software delivery functions to create and maintain robust, scalable and efficient platforms for developers to build upon. With interest in platform engineering growing, now is the time to understand exactly what it is. Let's dive into the elements of platform engineering.

What Platform Engineering Is

Platform engineering has emerged to solve common problems with DevOps initiatives as they scale. Many developers today face increasing workloads and field incredible demands from other teams, all while needing to stay on top of the latest skills, technologies and techniques. At its core, platform engineering is a team structure and cultural shift used to manage complexity.

A platform team creates a self-service internal developer platform (IDP ). The IDP helps developers manage deployment pipelines, infrastructure and operations tasks. Several key components make platform engineering what it is, including:

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For platform engineering to be successful, organizations must adopt the " platform-as-a-product " mindset. Adopting a product-oriented mindset enables platform teams to address challenges in the engineering pipeline effectively. Establishing direct communication channels between platform engineers and the IDP is imperative for successful platform engineering and can serve as a crucial determinant of its success.

Developer Experience

Platform engineers create abstractions for developers, saving them from the complexities of the underlying application infrastructure. This abstraction contributes to the developer experience since developers can focus on writing code without worrying about the intricacies of hardware or software dependencies.

Automation And Tooling

Automation is a key aspect of platform engineering. Platform engineers build tools and implement processes that automate repetitive tasks, ensuring consistency and efficiency in the development and deployment pipeline. This might involve continuous integration, continuous deployment and configuration management.

Monitoring And Performance Optimization

Platform engineers set up monitoring systems to track the performance of applications and the underlying infrastructure. They analyze data, identify bottlenecks and optimize the platform for optimal performance.

What Platform Engineering Is Not

Platform engineering can be tricky to navigate and can easily be confused with other practices or elements of software delivery. Along with understanding what platform engineering is, it's important to understand what platform engineering is not.

A Shared Service

Shared services are a traditional way to centralize work and ensure a level of standardization is achieved. Typically, individuals submit tickets for an operations engineer to handle the requested work. However, this approach doesn't align with platform engineering practices. Instead, the standardization is brought to developers through self-service platforms, which include APIs and user interfaces that developers can use to trigger standard automated workflows. While a platform team may offer support for developers using the IDP, they shouldn't be set up to perform work based on tickets.

Solely IT Operations

Platform engineering goes beyond traditional IT operations. It involves strategic planning, design and collaboration with development teams to create a dynamic and efficient platform.

Exclusively About Technology

While technology is a fundamental aspect, platform engineering also involves understanding and addressing the human and organizational factors that influence the platform's effectiveness. This includes communication, collaboration and adapting to cultural shifts.

Solely About Developers

While developer experience is important in platform engineering, successful platform engineering initiatives align with the organization's broader business goals. It is not a siloed activity but an integral part of the company's strategy, involving collaboration from various teams and stakeholders across business, finance, development, security and more.

Steps Toward Platform Engineering

The introduction of platform engineering needs to be aligned to specific goals. You should have a clear idea of which pain a platform will solve before you commit to introducing an IDP. Once developers depend on a platform, you are committed to maintaining it over the long term.

The typical goals for a platform team are to reduce cognitive load for developers, increase throughput and stability, and reduce fragmentation by offering preapproved technology choices through the platform. If these aren't problems you have a burning desire to solve, adoption is likely to fail. There are also some foundations you should have in place before you invest in building an IDP.

A common path to success with platform engineering is to use existing best-in-class tools to provide the user interface and APIs for your platform. While wrapping the tools in a unified single access point may be useful later, it's not the best place to start as it may delay the return on investment.

As Team Topologies author Matthew Skelton says , "The simplest platform is purely a list on a wiki page of underlying components or services used by consuming software." The information on the page reduces how much knowledge developers need to deliver software, so they can build and deploy their applications without having deep knowledge of deployment pipelines and infrastructure as code. As the platform team works with developers to refine the elements of a golden path, a wiki page is low-cost and fast to iterate.

Once stable, the platform team can create a layer of abstraction that automates the path knowing that the development teams will use their work. This process can be repeated to build a shared understanding of other concerns, such as security, compliance and observability before encoding them in the platform.

Platform engineering is becoming a critical practice in software development, providing the foundation upon which applications are built and operated. It aims to achieve high developer satisfaction without impacting the experience for customers or the organization, all while taming burnout and solving common pain points in application development and delivery. By first understanding what platform engineering is and is not, organizations can better leverage this discipline to create resilient, scalable and innovative technology platforms.

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Reading Homework Review - Story Elements - Common Core Aligned

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This resource is a weekly review of story elements . This can be used for homework, morning work, or classwork. It would be perfect to use during an literature unit or after the unit for reinforcement.

About the Story Elements Reading Homework

This resource contains 4 fiction passages written at two levels: 4th/5th grade level and 3rd/4th grade level.

*One passage is meant to be used for an entire week.

*There is a different assignment each day with the same passage. The students will revisit the passage each day to complete the daily assignment. This will support a deeper understanding of the text and provide the student a chance to practice close reading of a text.

*There are 3 options for the daily assignments for you to choose from based on your students' needs. A blank directions page is also included if you want to write in your own directions for the daily assignments.

*For each option, Monday through Wednesday are general, open-ended responses to the text, and Thursday is a set of text-dependent questions specific to each story. The questions are all short answer and focus on more advanced story element questions.

Follow these steps to assign the review work:

1. Choose and print the directions and passage level you want to use.

2. Print the Thursday comprehension questions.

3. Staple the three pages and you have a week’s worth of review ready for your students.

An answer key with suggested answers is included.

Common Core Alignment:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3 - Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3 - Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

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Breaking news, elements of espn’s bill belichick story ‘clear bulls–t’: pat mcafee contributor.

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A “Pat McAfee Show” contributor expressed doubt about ESPN’s most recent bombshell Bill Belichick story on ESPN’s own airwaves.

Connor Campbell, who goes by the nickname “Boston Connor” in a nod to his New England sports fandom, took issue with the elements of the report by Seth Wickersham, Jeremy Fowler and Don Van Natta Jr .

The story covered Belichick’s failure to land an NFL head coaching job this offseason, reporting in part that Kraft warned Falcons owner Arthur Blank against hiring the six-time Super Bowl champion head coach .

“Some of the things from it [are] just clear bulls–t,” Campbell said, adding that he took notes by hand on what he thought was wrong about the story.

The Post reached out to the authors of the story for a response, and Wickersham answered, “We stand by our reporting.”

On the show, Campbell explained the elements of the story about which he had questions.

“They said that Bill was blindsided that he didn’t get the job [with the Falcons]. That’s kind of hard to believe. They were looking at 14 candidates. One of them was a former interim head coach in Atlanta, who Arthur Blank knows,” Campbell said.

“We talked to Raheem Morris [on the show]. If you were to sit down with that guy, it would be hard not to be like, ‘Yeah, I’d run through a wall. That is our head coach.'”

Campbell reiterated that “it’s hard to believe a guy who’s been in the NFL since 1975 would be blindsided by anything.”

The show announced Wednesday that Belichick will be on its NFL draft programming next Thursday , and McAfee has been open in the past about wanting to book the legendary head coach for a weekly spot.

“The other thing that they mentioned … Belichick wasn’t eager to work with [Falcons CEO] Rich McKay,” Campbell continued. “I guess, sure, maybe, that could be true, but if they’re just putting out bland statements like that … He wasn’t eager. We can say that, because he probably wasn’t eager to work with anybody — things like that are annoying.”

Campbell acknowledged that “I am biased towards Bill Belichick” and showed off the tattoo of Belichick’s famous “We’re on to Cincinnati” quote on his right arm.

He said that “clearly” something happened between Belichick and Kraft as their relationship dissolved, and that perhaps Kraft had badmouthed Belichick to Blank in the past, but expressed doubt that Kraft called Blank in January and gave the head coach a bad review.

“The idea that Bob Kraft called up Arthur Blank and said, ‘Hey if you hire this a–hole you’re screwed for the next 10 years, you’re going to ruin your entire building’ — that exact thing, very hard to believe,” Campbell said.

As was evidenced during the much-ballyhooed saga with former ESPN executive Norby Williamson , “The Pat McAfee Show” has unprecedented creative freedom at ESPN based in part on how the relationship with the program is structured.

McAfee and his crew are not ESPN employees — they license the show to the network, and thus enjoy more freedom to do things like question the veracity of ESPN stories than anybody who has ever previously worked for the company would have had.

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It withstood hurricanes, lightning strikes and pests: 'This tree is a survivor'

ORLANDO – It’s been struck by lightning at least three times and has survived multiple hurricanes – and it sprouted from an acorn around the same time Juan Ponce de León’s ship first landed on Florida's eastern coast.

“Big Tree,” an imposing southern live oak, sits in an unassuming park just outside Orlando’s business district, its moss-covered limbs jutting out over 30 feet on all sides. Over 400 years old, the tree is so impressive that members of a Michigan-based nonprofit flew to Orlando in February to climb and sample it. The arborists are now in the midst of a monthslong process to grow new roots from the clippings. The reason: To clone the historic tree, store its DNA and plant potentially thousands of replicas across the Southeast.

The southern live oak, which has a trunk as thick as 8 feet, is part of a rare cohort of trees which have survived centuries of extreme weather, pests, diseases, human interactions and other life threatening phenomena. Research has shown that such old, large trees pull significant amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air and are integral to the diversity and resilience of forests across the globe. And with the increasing threat of climate change, arborists, researchers, conservationists and others say that they must be protected and preserved – even, perhaps, through cloning.

“This tree is a survivor,” said David Milarch, the co-founder of the family-run nonprofit Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, which is attempting to clone "Big Tree." “There's something in that DNA that, in spite of everything it's been through, it's still growing, it's still healthy. That's the type of tree we need.”

How 'Big Tree' became clone-worthy

Native to much of the southeast, live oaks are iconic figures in landscapes across the Sunshine State, from Tallahassee to the Florida Keys. They're among the state's largest native plants, able to grow 60-80 feet tall and 60-120 feet wide, according to the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

And though the massive oaks can survive centuries with their deep root systems and thick branches – which can withstand hurricane force winds – "Big Tree" is a central Florida standout because it has outlived its contemporaries by over 100 years, said David Wagg, Orlando’s Families, Parks and Recreation manager.

"We've got well over 100,000 trees that the city maintains, and we consider 'Big Tree' to be the oldest," he said. "It's obviously a grand old tree."

The parks division first installed a placard noting the tree’s historic status in the 1920s and, about 30 years later, bought the land, named the park after the live oak and opened it up to the public.

In the 1970s, the tree was struck by lightning at least three times during a ferocious thunderstorm. The city hired experts to inspect the tree and perform critical work on its root structure. Over the past 50 years, it has required minimal upkeep.

When the city was connected with Archangel Ancient Tree Archive earlier this year, officials soon agreed to let the nonprofit's arborists ascend the tree's canopy and take samples.

What is Archangel Ancient Tree Archive?

Over the past 30 years, Archangel Ancient Tree Archive has made its name on cloning more than 130 tree species across the country, including giant sequoias and 3,000-year-old California redwoods. The group's clones shade the streets of Seattle and Eugene, Oregon. In the Presidio, a park at the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, 75 clones of near-extinct redwoods are growing. Its trees have also gone overseas, with a portion of the nonprofit's clone-stock standing in at least seven countries around the world.

The group has also cloned trees with notable historic connections. Horticulturalists replicated some of the last trees planted at the direction of George Washington on Mount Vernon, his estate in Virginia. They’ve also cultivated several clones of trees on Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate in Virginia and Teddy Roosevelt’s home on Long Island, New York.

Milarch, the co-founder of the group, is a third-generation arborist. As a boy growing up in northern Michigan, he spent countless hours working on his father's shea tree nursery, which he ran for several years and eventually inherited.

But it wasn't until he was in his early 40s when a near-death experience led him to start the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive.

In 1991, Milarch almost died of kidney and liver failure after he decided to quit drinking cold turkey, according to the biography "The Man Who Planted Trees" by Jim Robbins. About a month later, Milarch, who was still recovering, scrawled his plan to clone the planet's biggest and oldest plants. Ever since, he's dedicated his life to the project that he says may one day halt and reverse climate change.

"There was a clear line between my life before ... and my life after," the 74-year-old told USA TODAY, speaking of his epiphany. "Until my last breath, I'll be working for the world's grandchildren."

The 'magic' of cloning historic trees

In order to clone an ancient tree the Archangel way, one must climb it.

The group has made national headlines for this sight alone: Helmeted researchers hoisting themselves up the trunk of a colossal redwood or sequoia in order to find, somewhere in the canopy, a piece of live tissue – tree cloning’s vital ingredient, Milarch said.

The freshly cut limbs and leaves are taken to the group’s lab in Michigan, where, in climate-controlled rooms, propagators work to spur growth from the samples.

The most common method is by rooted cuttings, which has long been used by horticulturists. In this method, a tip of a tree's branch is dipped into hormones, placed into a foam plug and set inside a mist chamber. Then, the waiting begins. A sign of life could take several months to a year to show, if one comes at all.

In another method called tissue culture, propagators take a quarter-inch of stem, drip it in a liquid made up of a dozen hormones and other chemicals, seal it in an airtight container and wait until it grows roots.

With each new tree, the group tries hundreds of combinations. The experts change the hormones, adjust the temperature of the test room and vary the amount of water being sprayed on the samples. About 90% will fail. However, those that form new roots are subsequently cloned. Because they’re young, their success rate is much higher than that of samples from the original tree.

“Once we get some juvenile wood and then start cloning off of that, we can make millions of these trees,” Milarch said. “It’s about figuring out what the magic combination is that allows the tree to clone itself. … It takes a while but cloning [historic] trees is akin to asking a 100-year-old woman to have a baby.”

Is tree cloning a magic bullet?

Experts who spoke with USA TODAY lauded the group for its innovative methods and large scale propagation, but they cast doubt on the assumption underlying the nonprofit’s work: That the clones will prosper as the originals have.

Scott Merkle, a professor of forest biology at the University of Georgia, said there are many factors that contribute to a tree’s age in addition to genetics: the site it’s sitting on, what’s interacting with it in the soil, the surrounding environment and luck.

“There's so many variables that there's certainly no guarantee that they will be able to survive and perform better than other trees that you might put out on the landscape,” Merkle said. He added that the sheer age of historic trees makes them difficult to study.

“There’s no real way to test these hypotheses in our lifetimes,” he said. “I think it’s a great thing that they’re doing. … I just don’t know how realistic it is.”

John Butnor, a research plant physiologist for the U.S. Forest Service, said although a tree's genetics may play a role, it's the genetic diversity of the nearby trees “that gave rise to that individual.”

“Trees grow together in [forests] and affect each other,” Butnor said. And because genetic diversity is so vital to a forest’s health, cloning has not been part of the federal government’s calculus in developing resilient forests. Butnor added that if clones make up a vast portion of a forest's tree population, it could potentially “reduce genetic diversity."

Chuck Cannon, a senior scientist at the Morton Arboretum, a research center and botanical garden in Illinois, said he hopes focus remains on protecting the remaining historic trees, which he said, in some cases, are impossible to replace.

“I don't really see [ancient and old trees] as saviors,” Cannon said, “but, they’re an important piece of the puzzle, and something that we're going to lose otherwise if we don't protect them.”

To Milarch, historic trees are worth the gamble. If the clones of historic trees live as long as their parents, they'll put up a strong fight against climate change, he said. If not, at least their DNA will be stored, and the planet's oldest, most majestic trees – from California redwoods to Florida live oaks – will be able to avoid any potential extinction.

“This is our last opportunity to clone these ancient trees, capture those all important genetics, plant them and pay it forward,” he said. “Time's not in our favor.”

Back in Orlando, the city stands to benefit from cloning "Big Tree."

After the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive successfully clones the live oak, the city will receive several, hopefully by the end of the year, said Milarch and Wagg, the parks manager. Other replicas of “Big Tree” will go to cities, counties and nurseries across the region.

"I think that's pretty cool," Wagg said. "A little piece of Orlando will be throughout the Southeast."

Oak Ridge National Laboratory credited with discovery of 3 elements in the periodic table

One of the proud achievements of Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the discovery of three elements either by its own staff or in collaboration with other institutions in the United States and Russia. Carolyn Krause provides a history of these discoveries in a three-part series based mostly on a talk last fall by Jim Roberto, who held many leadership positions at ORNL, to a class of the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning (ORICL) .

Oak Ridge National Laboratory is credited with the discovery of three elements. All of them were originally “missing” from a nearly completed row in the periodic table – the organized array of all the chemical elements in order of increasing atomic number. That’s the total number of protons in an atomic nucleus of each element.

The three elements are promethium (element 61), moscovium (element 115) and tennessine (element 117), which is named after Tennessee. Moscovium is named after Moscow – that will be explained in the second part of this series. In addition, nine elements have been discovered using ORNL isotopes.

An ORICL class recently learned these facts while listening to a fascinating history of element discovery involving ORNL presented by Jim Roberto. While at ORNL he served as director of the Solid State Division, associate laboratory director for physical sciences, deputy director for science and technology and associate laboratory director for partnerships.

He started his talk by discussing the first modern periodic table produced in 1869 by Dmitri Ivanich Mendeleev (1834-1907), a Russian chemist who developed the periodic classification of the elements according to each one’s atomic mass (atomic weight, based on the total number of protons and neutrons in each element’s atomic nucleus).

“The mass of each of the elements didn’t put them in the right place in the periodic table according to the pattern of their chemical properties,” Roberto said. “The reason is that the determination of the periodic law is not the mass. It’s the atomic number - the number of protons each element has.”

The atomic number for each known element was determined in 1913 by Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887-1915), a brilliant young British scientist who was killed fighting in World War I. He collected the X-Ray spectra of a variety of elements and found that the frequency of X-Ray radiation has a precise mathematical relationship to each element’s atomic number.

This relationship, in which X-Ray frequency is proportional to atomic number, is called Moseley’s Law. According to the law, elements arranged in the order of their atomic numbers show a periodic variation in atomic structure and most of their properties. Moseley discovered that element 61 was missing, a gap in the periodic law where this element should appear. That’s where Oak Ridge comes into the picture.

By 1939, 91 elements were known to exist, including uranium, which has 92 protons in each nucleus and, at the time, the highest atomic number in the periodic table. But element 61 was still not known to exist.

During the Manhattan Project, workers in Oak Ridge built the Graphite Reactor in 1943, then called the X-10 pilot plant at Clinton Laboratories. It was used to demonstrate that plutonium could be made from uranium fuel slugs bathed in neutrons at the reactor. Small amounts of plutonium from the reactor were separated from spent uranium slugs and sent by train to Los Alamos National Laboratory.

There it was determined that a new weapon design was needed to make an atomic bomb that would use as its fuel the larger amounts of plutonium expected to come from three big reactors in Hanford, Washington. A detonation to demonstrate that design works was the most dramatic scene in last year’s blockbuster “Oppenheimer” movie .

Element 61 was missing, Roberto said, “because it's radioactive. Shortly after Earth was born as a planet, element 61 mostly decayed away and could not be found. But element 61 was discovered in Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project at the Clinton Laboratories’ Graphite Reactor.”

Element 61 was first produced and characterized at the reactor in 1945 by Charles Coryell, Jacob A. Marinsky and Lawrence E. Glendenin. The team kept their discovery secret for security reasons because World War II was underway. In 1947, they announced they had found a new decay product of uranium fission in the spent slugs from the Graphite Reactor. It turned out to be the missing element 61.

Grace Mary Coryell, the wife of Coryell, director of the lab’s chemistry division, suggested that the element be named “prometheum,” after Prometheus, a figure in Greek mythology who is considered a champion of humankind. He defied the gods by stealing fire from Mount Olympus and bringing it to humans. The name was accepted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, which changed “prometheum” to “promethium” to comply with its spelling standards for elements in the periodic table.

Roberto noted that for national security reasons, a copy of an updated periodic table was displayed in 1945 in a secure place at the Y-12 electromagnetic plant for workers involved in isotope separation, a long-time Y-12 mission starting with uranium isotopes during the war. The periodic table included promethium and three newly discovered elements heavier than uranium - americium, curium and plutonium.

Promethium, which has the symbol Pm, was the last rare-earth element of the lanthanide series to be discovered. According to Wikipedia, most promethium-147 is utilized for research. It can be used as a beta radiation source in luminous paint; in thickness-measurement devices; in nuclear batteries for guided missiles, watches, pacemakers and radios, as well as a light source for signals.

Because natural promethium is scarce (it can be made by rare alpha-particle decays of natural europium-151), Pm-147 is typically synthesized by bombarding uranium-235 in enriched uranium with thermal neutrons in a reactor. The first sample of the highly radioactive metal made as a fission product was produced in 1963.

Promethium is only one of the many radioisotopes that ORNL produced at the Graphite Reactor and other reactors. The first one shipped went to a St. Louis hospital in 1946 for cancer research. In the 1960s more than 100,000 radioisotope shipments were made annually for use in research, medicine and industry. Because of the growing demand for certain isotopes and the need to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign supplies, at ORNL the Stable Isotope Production Facility is under construction, and the Radioisotope Processing Facility has been designed. Its opening behind the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) is planned for the 2030s.

Roberto then talked about the first efforts to create transuranium elements, which are not found in nature. In 1934, Enrico Fermi attempted to create heavier elements by irradiating uranium with neutrons in his lab in Italy. Because he identified a new type of radioactivity from products with atomic chemistry different from that of uranium and similar elements, he claimed in his published paper that he had found evidence of a new transuranic element, findings believed to be correct for several years.

Ida Noddack, a German chemist and co-discoverer of rhenium (element 75), quickly published a paper questioning Fermi’s conclusion. She pointed out that he had failed to chemically eliminate all elements lighter than uranium in his proofs and to consider that “it is conceivable that the nucleus breaks up into several large fragments, which would of course be isotopes of known elements but would not be neighbors of the irradiated element.”

Her findings were dismissed as untrue in the 1930s, but her paper, according to Wikipedia, “is considered historically significant today” because her conclusion “presaged what would become known” in 1939 as nuclear fission, first described and named in a scientific paper by another woman scientist, Lise Meitner (in collaboration with her nephew and two German experimental scientists, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944). As Roberto put it, “Fermi missed the discovery of nuclear fission” that the German scientists were acclaimed for making.

However, on Dec. 2, 1942, at the Chicago Pile-1, Fermi, then a Nobel laureate, led the team that advanced the understanding of how to exploit nuclear fission by demonstrating the first human-created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. This discovery made possible the 14 reactors built at ORNL.

A Nobel laureate who spearheaded the first discoveries of transuranium elements was Glenn Seaborg. In December 1940, his team working at the 60-inch cyclotron at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley produced man-made plutonium (element 93). They created the element by bombarding a uranium target with a beam of deuterons (hydrogen nuclei consisting of a proton and a neutron).

Seaborg and Edwin McMillan jointly won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1951 “for their discoveries in the chemistry of the transuranium elements.” However, there is strong evidence, as pointed out in past "Historically Speaking" columns, that Seaborg’s close friend Stanley Thompson made improvements in chemical separation techniques and radiation detectors that enabled him and his team to synthesize and identify five transuranium elements that helped Seaborg win a Nobel prize: berkelium (97 protons) and californium (98) in 1949-50 and einsteinium (99), fermium (100) and mendelevium (101) in 1952 and 1953.

Seaborg proposed a new row for the periodic table called the actinides to accommodate these newly discovered elements, including elements 102 and 103 (nobelium and lawrencium), Roberto said. Seaborg also envisioned the existence of superheavy elements with atomic numbers greater than 103 that would continue row 7 of the periodic table.

Seaborg knew that the only way to get a high enough yield of transuranic elements to determine their chemical properties would be in a high-flux nuclear reactor in which targets are struck by an extremely high number of neutrons per unit area per second. So, Seaborg wrote a letter to Lewis Strauss (1951-58), then chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission and the villain in the “Oppenheimer” movie.

Many ORNL staff considered Strauss the hero of the High Flux Isotope Reactor, the reactor that Seaborg, who later became AEC chairman in 1961, asked to be built at ORNL. The reason: Strauss received the HFIR proposal from Oak Ridge and he strongly advocated at a Nov. 24, 1958, hearing that a high-flux reactor be built.

HFIR started operation at ORNL in 1966. HFIR has created gram quantities of californium and lesser amounts of berkelium and einsteinium, enabling the study of the three transuranic elements and their unique chemistry. And 53 years after Seaborg wrote his letter to Strauss, on Apr. 5, 2010, tennessine (element 117, named after Tennessee) was discovered in Russia using berkelium produced in Oak Ridge at HFIR!

Thank you, Carolyn. Next week read Part 2 of the three-part series on the discovery of elements by ORNL.

D. Ray Smith is the city of Oak Ridge historian. His "Historically Speaking" column appears each week in The Oak Ridger.