Personal Narrative

The best place for second grade writers to start because it's all about THEM and their own experiences. They get to tell all of their favorite stories. First we'll learn how to tell stories across our five fingers to match the 5 pages of our booklets. For fiction, the first finger (page) should set up characters and setting (place and time), the next 3 fingers (pages) contain both events and feelings about the events and the final finger (page) concludes the action. We encourage stories about first times doing things, events that helped you learn a lesson or changed how you thought about something and events that have a strong emotion attached to them whether it be sad, excited, frustrated or happy.

Students practice verbally telling their story to plan

Major skills in PERSONAL NARRATIVE

ZOOMING in on a specific scene.

In order to elaborate on the important scene in a personal time it needs to be specific and small enough. We talk about not writing the watermelon or even a slice, but just one seed. "A vacation to Disney" is too big, "going on the rides" is closer, "my first time on Splash Mountain" is best! The whole story should take place in one general time period, not over a span of days and time (pages) shouldn't be wasted on setting up the story. No page about packing for Disney and waiting at the airport. Start right when you are there and planning to go on the ride. This allows more pages for small steps you take, how you feel, what you say and how your feelings change.

Elaboration: Using details to make the reader picture your story and make your characters come to life

The 3 major types of details in Personal Narrative are Action Details, Feeling Details and Dialogue Details. Two other types we work on is Description of Setting and Description of Characters, which are more complicated and focused on during Realistic Fiction in the spring.

We actively teach the types of details that writers use in Fiction by showing our mentor texts and how those authors do it. The teacher may use her text or other students to help them see the kinds of details they are commonly using and help them determine which kind they need more of. Action details are most important as without action there is no story. We want students to build up strings of small actions - not "I got on the bike", but "I swung my leg over the bike and settled onto the seat. My hands gripped the handles and I took a deep breath. I was ready to ride." These help us picture what is going on. The feeling details help us know what is going on in the characters' heads.

Elaborating helps us increase length of pages and fill all five pages up.

MORE ELABORATION: SHOW NOT TELL Don't just tell us what is happening - show us!

SHOWing, not TELLing by using smaller steps, dialogue and making characters move and think. This is what most helps us write lots of lines and make a picture in our reader’s head.

Tell: I was excited.

Show: I jumped up and down. “Is that present for me?” I cried smiling.

Tell: I opened the present.

Show: I ripped off the ribbon, tore apart the pretty paper and pulled open the box. Then I reached my hand inside to slowly pull out a…” (Small steps)

We practice identifying the HEART of the story - the most important part because of the strongest feeling or when the character changes/learns something. This is the best place for elaborating to show the reader why this part is so important in the story.

Beginnings and Endings help to make a story. We want to hook our readers right away and leave them with a feeling of closure at the end. We look at how the authors of our mentor texts do this and try out a few different ones to decide which we like best.

TRANSITION WORDS help us organize the events in our story in a chronological order and show passage of time. We are learning to try new ones, place them correctly in the story when time is changing and to vary them up throughout the piece

In the Beginning - first

In the Middle - then, next, after, a minute later, afterwards, at last, once, second, suddenly, when... while...

as soon as, before long, meanwhile, in the meantime, later

At the End - finally, last, in the End

WORD CHOICE: We learn about NOUNS, VERBS and ADJECTIVES during this first unit so that we can talk about choosing the best ones. We start with nouns so that we can be clear about WHO is doing WHAT - especially in the beginning and when introducing new characters. When we study verbs, we talk about how they put a picture in the reader's mind about how the character is doing something or how they feel. Did you just "Go" to the bus stop on the first day of school? or did you SKIP, RUN, or TRUDGE? Verbs help us SHOW. We talked about this in our dialogue too. "Come here," said dad. The meaning changes when we say "Come here!" demanded dad. He might be mad. Or "Come here," whispered dad. There might be a secret (or a sleeping baby!) We talked about adjectives (or sparkle words) that help us picture the nouns in our story. When telling about getting your new puppy, tell us what he looks like. Remember you can describe shape, size, texture, color, pattern, behavior, and feeling. Students who use good word choices are specific and don't says "things" or "stuff". They use the same vocabulary that they do when speaking.

This is the student-friendly revising checklist that we use for Personal Narrative (and later for Realistic Fiction). There is another page for the Editing components. During revising time, we want students to self-evaluate where they think they are in the process of gaining each of these skills. They can only check off that they are doing these things if they can show their partners where in the story they are doing it. If they are not doing something yet, that may become their next goal to work on at writing time.

What Can I do at Home? -

Keep Retelling stories from the past to your children and asking them to tell you stories. You can add onto the stories, modeling elaboration for them or ask questions that would help make the stories complete "How did you feel when that happened?"

Keep a running list of special events that occur or possible new story ideas for Personal Narratives. The unit may be over, but we will revisit all the same skills in Realistic Fiction later in spring. They could borrow some of those ideas. Also, Personal Narratives return in 3rd grade and students could start the year fresh with a whole list of possible ideas to write about that they otherwise might have forgotten about.

Point out in the stories you read together where an author SHOWED how a character felt or told in SMALL STEPS what they did. Look for description, elaboration and dialogue and talk about why it makes the story better.

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