What's the difference?

Last week we reviewed the characteristics of nonfiction books and then began to look at the characteristics of fiction books.  We learned that fiction stories have characters, a setting, and a plot - that means something usually happens in the story.  Often there is a problem that needs to be solved.  We read the story, "Giraffes Can't Dance" and then identified the main ideas.  We had to come up with one sentence that described what happened in the beginning of the story,  one sentence that described what happened in the middle, and one sentence that described  how the story ended.  Mrs. Betts was very impressed with how well we were able to do this.