EngageNY
Mid-Unit 3 Assessment: Drafting a Historical Fiction Narrative Based on Expert Trades
Young historians use their planning graphic organizer to prepare a personal narrative draft on expert trades. Since the instructional activity is considered the mid-unit assessment, learners respond to a writing prompt related to the...
Core Knowledge Foundation
First Grade Skills Unit 6
A unit explores alternative spellings, ways to include nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and prepositions in sentences, and writing personal narratives. Over 25 lessons, first graders participate in whole group and small group instruction....
The New York Times
650 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing
An extensive list of narrative prompts is just what you need to inspire young writers to tell their stories. Arranged by topic, the questions are sure give them something to talk about.
Curated OER
Memoir
After reading and analyzing two narrative memoirs, middle schoolers engage in a variety of activities, including writing an essay, developing a story map, and creating character charts. They then compare and contrast story maps, and...
Missouri Department of Elementary
The Clique
Mean girls and bully packs are favorite topic for films and TV shows that focus on the destructive power of cliques. High school freshmen are asked to reflect on both the positive and negative aspects of cliques by reading a short...
Facing History and Ourselves
Becoming Ourselves
Here's a great way to build community during the first days of the new school year. Participants read personal narratives, then craft and share their stories with others.
Curated OER
Strategies for Organization and Elaboration of Personal Narrative
Personal narrative writing is usually a favorite form of writing for youngsters because they get to write about a personal experience. The lesson here asks pupils to take a piece of narrative writing and improve it by following...
Curated OER
Narrative Writing: Using Exact Words
Review the narrative writing process with your emerging story writers. They read a sample narrative and identify five vague verbs that could be replaced with a more exact, exciting verb. Then they write a personal narrative making sure...
Curated OER
Bucket List Poetry
What is on your pupils' "Bucket Lists" - the list of things they want to do before they die? Their choices of activities for this list could be very revealing, and is a great source of inspiration for a personal poem. The lesson prompts...
Curated OER
Memoir Writing Based on Jerry Spinelli's Milkweed
Using chapter 1 of Jerry Spinelli's Milkweed, middle schoolers write a personal memoir based on Spinelli's style and a Six Trait writing activity. The lesson suggests several ways to activate prior knowledge, including a picture book and...
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1: Unit 1, Lesson 11
Chapter 10 of Malcolm X's Autobiography introduces readers to Elijah Muhammad's teachings. Discussion questions focusing on syntax and diction draw attention to how Malcolm X's perspective on Mr. Muhammad changes.
Curated OER
Instill a Passion for Writing Short Stories
Quick writing tips and tricks to guide and polish learners' narrative writing.
Curated OER
Lesson: Storyboarding Revolution
Kids consider revolution as a basis for creativity, art, and storytelling. After reading an excerpt from the book, Persepolis, learners choose one event from any world revolution to write about. They storyboard the event focusing on...
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1: Unit 1, Lesson 20
The March on Washington takes center stage in the discussion of chapter 15 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X; however, class members are presented with an entirely different view of the march from the ones they have previously studied....
Curated OER
Personal Experience Narratives
Help your middle schoolers identify personal experience narratives in their own lives through telling stories themselves and from family members or other adults. They study personal experience narratives in Swapping Stories and compare...
Write Away!
Voices In the Park
Explore the impact a narrator's point of view has on a story with a reading of the children's book, Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne. Written in four different voices, the story is told and retold from different perspectives to...
Curated OER
The Ultimate Survivor Using Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
What items would you need to survive if you were stranded in a remote place? Using chapter 10 of Gary Paulsen's Hatchet, middle-schoolers work through a Six Trait writing activity to create a story about their own survival in a similar...
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1, Unit 2, Lesson 1
As part of a study of narrative writing, class members analyze how Leslie Marmon Silko structures the beginning and orients and engages readers in her narrative, "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit."
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1, Unit 3, Lesson 3
Working in pairs, class members use the provided narrative writing rubric to assess the effectiveness of dialogue, pacing, and description in two model paragraphs with similar content. Writers then use the insights they have gained from...
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1, Unit 3, Lesson 7
As an end-of-unit assessment, class members complete the final drafts of their Common Application narrative essay and then meet in pairs to discuss the independent reading selection.
Curated OER
Lesson Plan 13: Going Deeper Mini-Lesson
November is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month! If your class is participating (or simply doing a narrative writing unit), this peer review lesson is part of a larger unit which can be easily found online. Once your writers have...
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1, Unit 2, Lesson 6
The final lesson in this narrative writing unit asks class members to craft a multi-paragraph essay reflecting on the structural elements Leslie Marmon Silko employs in her "Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit."
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1: Unit 1, Lesson 4
Chapter 3 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X discusses how central ideas are developed in a narrative. Readers use the provided annotated bookmark to record evidence of ideas such as racial identity, integration/separation, and systemic...
EngageNY
Grade 12 ELA Module 1: Unit 1, Lesson 6
To prepare for drafting their Common Application narrative, class members return to the opening pages of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and examine how Haley engages and orients readers, establishes his narrator and point of view, and...