Raising the Quality of Narrative Writing

With our first personal narratives published and celebrated, we are living the writerly life.  Our class is looking at mentor texts such as “Eleven” by Sandra Ciscernos and Fireflies by Julie Brinckloe and reading with a writer’s eye, looking for writing moves we hope to use in our own personal narratives. Additionally, we are generating lists of important stories in our lives. Ask your student how to start with an important person or place and then to let that invoke memories connected with it.  Students will soon select their most meaningful story to write. We will work this round to push the story to also include why it is significant and what lesson the student learned from it. I can’t wait to see where this round of personal narrative writing takes our class!