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
Writing Short Stories: The Fun Way
Do your young authors suffer from writer's block when they try to write short stories? Access their natural creativity with C-Gor, the writing monster! The instructional activity takes aspiring authors through a new writing process...
Novelinks
The Devil’s Arithmetic: Personal Narrative Assignment
How can an unfamiliar place help you learn something about yourself? Use a narrative writing prompt as you culminate your unit on Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic. Kids consider the ways that, like the main character from the novel,...
Curated OER
Narrative Writing
Binoculars are used as a metaphor for good descriptive writing. Class members first view a small picture and then an enlarged view of the same image in which the details come into focus. Next, learners examine a paragraph lacking sensory...
Curated OER
Out of the Dust: Narrative Essay
To conclude their study of Out of the Dust, the 1998 Newbery Medal winning verse novel, individuals craft a narrative essay based on one of the themes in Karen Hesse's novel.
Scholastic
Spin-a-Story: Writing Prompts Chart
"But I don't know what to write about!" Now, there's a very familiar complaint. And here's a very creative solution. Young authors are given a writing prompt chart, spin three wheels that provide suggestions for the who, what, and where...
Curated OER
Collage to Writing
Practice expository and creative writing with your class. Pupils use magazines to find pictures, cut them out, and create a collage. This work of art is then used as a writing prompt. They describe the collage in either a creative or...
University of Arizona
Fusing Firecrackers with Narrative
Improve your youngsters' descriptive writing. They study an object and write about what they see as a warm-up, then they read an excerpt from Paul Guest's memoir, One More Theory about Happiness. The next part of the activity prompts...
Curated OER
Borrowing Narrative Skills from Mr. Fletcher: Using a "Prompts in Reverse" Technique to Inspire Your Writers
Help your class find their writing voices with this lesson which uses the work of Ralph Fletcher to guide a "Prompt in Reverse" activity. Using the chapter "First Pen" from Fletcher's Marshfield Dreams, learners decipher what they...
Curated OER
The "Write" Stuff: Strategies and Conventions for Imaginative Writing
A comprehensive and immersive series of lessons that examines various aspects of story development leads learners into writing a narrative of their own. Writers develop an understanding of the writing process as they use the learning...
Curated OER
Reliving History through Slave Narratives
Helpful for an American literature or history unit, this lesson prompts middle schoolers to examine slavery in the United States. They read slave narratives that were part of the Federal Writers' Project and then conduct their own...
Civil War Trust
The Common Civil War Soldier
Imagine you are a soldier in the Civil War. What are you wearing? What do you need to carry with you? Examine the life of a person during the Civil War, from drummer boys to powder monkeys to musket-toting soldiers. Elementary learners...
Curated OER
Narrative Writing
Are you the oldest in your family? The youngest? The middlest? How do you feel about your place in your family? After reading such stories as My Rotten, Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by...
Curated OER
Lesson: I Am the Wall
The Maya created amazing stone carvings and sculptures, but what were they for? Kids analyze the significance and purpose of a Maya stela and then write a creative piece. They imagine they are the stela, and write a story about what life...
EngageNY
Mid-Unit Assessment: Single Draft Narrative
Put it in your own words. Scholars work independently on their mid-unit assessments by responding to a writing prompt. They write about Miné Okubo’s life and the moments when Okubo became visible again.
Curated OER
Details, Details, Details
Writing can become one-dimensional if authors don't involve all their senses. First, scholars observe a strange object which, ideally, they can touch and even smell. Without using certain words (you can create a list or have the class...
Curated OER
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
Imagine what it was like to be a slave in the United States in 1845. Eighth graders are given an opportunity to experience life from the point of view of Frederick Douglass as they read and discuss an annotated passage from Narrative of...
Curated OER
Tasty Topics
Students analyze a graphic from an article and predict what the article might be about. After reading an article, they discover a journalist's experience of traveling across the United States to compare fast food restaurants. They...
Curated OER
Sequencing
Are you looking for a way to teach sequence of events in your narrative writing unit? Bring this instructional activity to your middle school class, as it prompts young writers to create a narrative sequence map of events that have...
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
Show Not Tell
Middle schoolers learn to show, not tell, in their narrative writing. A slide show takes them through the process of choosing strong, descriptive words, and then provides writing prompts for them to use as practice. The first two pages...
EngageNY
Launching the Performance Task: Prompt, Characters, Groups
Scholars unpack the word confession as they prepare to write confessionals based on characters from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Next, they read their narratives to a small group of peers as part of a final performance task.
Novelinks
The Little Prince: Response to Art Exercise
Depending on your perspective, solitude can be lovely or very, very lonely. Kids take a look at the simple landscape illustrated in Antoine de Saint Éxupery's The Little Prince, and write a short journal entry about their perception of...
Curated OER
Unforgettable...
Middle and high schoolers remember their most memorable experiences, and then connect their own narrative with an exposition about the topic associated with their experience. This New York Times lesson would be a great addition to your...