Louisiana Department of Education
How to Write a Memoir
Who are we and what shapes our identities? Seventh graders work to answer this question as they learn how to write a memoir. Full of non-print resources and supplemental texts that range from fiction to non-fiction, scholars write their...
21 x 20 Media
A+ Writing Prompts
Shake it up! Shake your tablet to bring up a unique writing prompt for journaling or blogging with your class. Shake again and a new one appears. Prompts can come from different categories (sketches, scenes, texts, words, news) to help...
Nosapo
Family Titles, Pronouns, Writing about a Person
How is your grandmother related to you? How is your cousin related to your grandmother? Learn about family relationships and pronouns with an activity that guides pupils to write two short narratives about members of their families.
Novelinks
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: Writing Strategy
How do your pupils believe others see them? Invite them to write narratives to explore the image they present to the word. The narratives, inspired by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, are to be set at each pupil's hypothetical funeral.
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...
EngageNY
Writing and Sharing: A Narrative of Adversity Plan
When life brings you lemons .. write about it! Scholars work with partners to complete graphic organizers analyzing two narratives. Next, they develop an outline for their narrative writing assignment about a personal experience with...
EngageNY
Writer's Gallery and End of Unit 3 Assessment: On-Demand New Historical Fiction Narrative
Fourth-grade writers applaud their historical narrative writing pieces through a Writer's Gallery. First, they read an assigned classmate's work and leave a positive comment on a sticky note. Once learners have read a couple of people's...
EngageNY
Practice Planning a Historical Narrative: The Wheelwright
Fourth graders use a four-square graphic organizer to plan a paragraph writing about a wheelwright. Using gathered research from the previous unit, young writers discover how to organize a plot in preparation for writing a historical...
EngageNY
Mid-Unit Assessment and Establishing a Context for My Hero’s Journey Narrative
How do writers engage their readers in a story? Pupils consider the question and use the informational text, "The Hero's Journey" to justify their plan for their own fictional narrative. To that end, scholars write an explanatory...
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...
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...
Fluence Learning
Writing Informative Text: School Days
A three-part writing assessment challenges scholars to think critically about schools of the past and present. Learners read informative texts, answer questions to prepare for a discussion, research in small groups, complete a Venn...
EngageNY
End of Unit Assessment: Final Draft of Hero’s Journey Narrative
All journeys must come to an end. Using the final lesson in the series, pupils analyze a model narrative for use of transitional words and phrases. Next, they apply their learning to their final drafts of their hero's journey narrative.
PBS
Exploring First-Person Narrative
If you really want to know, this is a terrific lesson all about narratives, which is just a fancy way of saying telling stories. And you get to do it without being phony or anything. My favorite part is that you get to read a passage...
DLTK
St. Patrick's Day Creative Writing Prompt
Celebrate St. Patrick's Day and encourage creativity with a writing prompt. Young scholars to compose a narrative that details what they would keep at the end of a rainbow.
DLTK
St. Patrick's Day Creative Writing Prompt #2
Make narrative writing festive with a St. Patrick's Day-themed writing prompt! Sscholars provide a detailed account of Sean the Leprechaun and an amazing event that happened to him on a joyful spring morning.
EngageNY
“The Hero’s Journey”: Using a Graphic Organizer to Deconstruct Percy Jackson’s Hero’s Journey and Plan a New Hero’s Journey Narrative
Time to go on a journey! Using a graphic organizer, scholars deconstruct Percy Jackson's hero's journey from the Rick Riordan novel, The Lightning Thief. Next, they begin planning their own hero's journey narrative, creating a profile of...
EngageNY
Planning the First Draft of the Character Confessional Narrative
Scholars read and analyze a model character confessional narrative to help guide their writing. Then, they plan the first draft of a character confessional based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
EngageNY
Writing to Show, Not Tell: Dialogue, Sensory Words, and Strong Action Verbs
Consume, gobble, devour ... serving up strong verbs! Writers focus on using dialogue, strong action verbs, and sensory details in their writing. After analyzing a model narrative, they apply their learning to their own hero's journey...
Curated OER
Writing a Character Sketch
Combining descriptive and expository writing skills, middle schoolers create a character sketch about someone they know well. They use a graphic organizer to help them discuss a model character sketch and organize/write one of their own....
EngageNY
Mid-Unit 2 Assessment: Analyzing Narrative Structure and Author’s Craft: Part 1
Using the resource, scholars complete a mid-unit assessment to gauge their learning at the halfway point of the unit. Pupils read the myth "The Harvest That Never Came" and plot its narrative structure.
Curated OER
Scriptwriting Skill Module: Dialogue
What is dialogue? What must it contain? Use this plan to discuss dialogue with your emerging writers. They write a dialogue in script form to dramatize a conversation. Dialogue examples are included.
Poetry4kids
How to Write a Tanka Poem
Take your haikus to the next level with tanka poems, another form of Japanese poetry that regulates the length and rhythm of each line by syllables. Young writers read the explanation, examples, and tips for tanka poems before writing...
RSA Group
Write About This
Looking for an easy way to encourage youngsters to write about a variety of different topics? Users simply choose an image to write about from a large selection of beautiful photographs and then compose original opinion pieces and...