Use lots of mentor text passages and books. Spend a day or two looking at examples of personal narratives. If you want your students to be able to successfully write a personal narrative, you need to explicitly teach them what that is. Make sure students know what a personal narrative is
But make sure you let them work independently without commenting on their work.Ģ. Remember you haven’t taught this material yet. Then use a simple rubric to score the sample, but don’t add the grade to the grade book.Įxpect your students to struggle. Allow one writing period, between 30-45 minutes, to respond to it the best they can. For example: “Tell me about a time you visited a new place, such as a new school, a new friend’s house, a new playground, or a new city.” These suggestions help get students thinking about how to answer the prompt. And offer some suggestions for how to answer that prompt. Give students a prompt so you can be sure they are using the right type of writing. Keep the pre-assessment assignment super simple. It also gives you a baseline from which to measure student growth at the end of the unit. A pre-assessment helps you plan lessons and form conference groups.
This allows you to see what students know before you teach the unit. It’s important to start each writing unit with a pre-assessment. Here are some tips for teaching personal narratives Personal narratives also help you get to know the students at the beginning of the year. All students have personal experiences that they can write about it (although you may have to help them realize this), so this makes it an easy genre to use when you introduce writing. My favorite genre to teach at the beginning of the year is personal narrative.Ī personal narrative is a true story based on personal experiences. You can read more about teaching writing in units here. This helps them truly master the skills and strategies of each genre. Rather than skipping around from topic to topic, students get to dig into one genre for eight weeks. Focusing on one unit at a time helps students become better writers. When I was in the classroom, I organized my writing instruction into units of study.