![]() This can be a huge support for students who struggle to write personal narratives. Students need to be surrounded by interesting words and phrases they can experiment with. I looked around with embarrassment as the teacher pointed to the old, orange chair that would be mine for the rest of the school year.Īfter discussing the three sentences have students pull a sentence from their story to try out the alternating between summary and description technique. It was always so dark and smelled like years-old dust. She made me sit in a dirty, old, orange chair.Īlternating: I hated going to that tiny “special” classroom every day. I was embarrassed, scared, and bullied by the teacher every day. I was forced to sit in the same chair every day that year.ĭescription: The tiny, “special” classroom was dark, dusty, and smelly. It was embarrassing and I was treated like I didn’t know anything. Summary: I hated going to that “special” classroom. ![]() The final example alternates between summary and description. Here are examples of too much summarizing and another example of repetitive descriptive details. They shouldn’t just summarize everything and they shouldn’t describe every detail either. This exercise helps students understand that they need to alternate between summary and detailed descriptive writing when writing their personal narratives. To Summarize or Describe, That is the Question Tell students to have characters doing something to show what they want to describe rather than using describing words. For this exercise, analyze the difference between the two sentences with students and then have them try it out on a sentence from their first draft. Nina swiped the paper from my desk and announced to the entire class that my work was too messy. Nina was mean, cruel, and horrible versus Ms. Show students an example of a sentence with too many adjectives and then the same sentence using verbs. Often, students think they need to add more adjectives to write more descriptively, but that’s a mistake! What students need are more action verbs. She smiled often and spoke softly. For this exercise, have students make some of the details about the characters in their story up, to add to the story and help readers see the events of the story more clearly. But, I came to know her as a kind and patient teacher. Her hands were crossed in front of her black and white polka-dot dress and her eyeglasses covered most of her face. She had short jet black hair, bright red lipstick, and black eyeliner. Perez stood at the front of the room and announced, “Today is an exciting day, you get to find out what reading group you are in!”. I made a lot of the details up based on the blurry memory that the teacher had black hair and dressed nicely. Below are a few exercises you can try with your students to get them to write with more detail.Ĭharacter Descriptions: Don’t remember? Make it up.Įxplain to students that no one ever really remembers all the details of past events, so you have to make a lot of it up! Here’s an example describing my 3rd-grade teacher. This blog post about how to teach descriptive writing can help. This is why we need exercises that will get our creative and descriptive juices flowing. This is probably one of the most challenging parts of narrative writing, for kids and adults. Students need lots of opportunities to practice their creative and descriptive writing skills. Not all aspects of the framework need to be utilized, just the parts that spur student ideas. Then, one day some problem occurs or a mistake happens that requires some sort of ordeal or even adventure. For example, you might explain to students that their personal narrative can start off kind of boring…describing normal life, the status quo. ![]() Parts of this framework can be used for personal narrative writing too. Teachers may assume this organizational framework is only for fictional stories, but that’s not true. This framework is organized into eleven parts: the character is living their normal/status quo life, then there is something that happens that calls them to adventure, there is some sort of big problem or crisis, and there is a guide who is introduced that helps the character in some way through this crisis, then there is a return to the status quo but with a character that has changed somehow. Hero’s Journey- this framework has been popularized by Joseph Cambell, Star Wars movies, Percy Jackson, and Harry Potter books. ![]()
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