“…EVERY kid has a story—many stories, in fact. And that is what a personal narrative unit is all about. It’s about honoring the experiences that kids bring with them to your classroom every day (the good, the bad, and the ugly experiences too). It’s about saying ‘YES! Minecraft IS exciting to hear about!’ ‘YES! I do want to hear another story about walking to school in the morning!’ ‘YES! Please write about the big fight, the mistake you made, the trouble you got into.’ ‘YES! YES! YES! You do have stories to tell. Yes, your real true life, your lived experience is worthy. Write it.'”
-Beth Moore, Two Writing Teachers, “Why Narrative Writing Matters” (2015)
Every kid has a story—and those stories deserve to be heard. It is fundamental for children to write personal narratives because it shows them they have a voice and that voice is important. But how can we help our students delve deeper and find writing topics that move them forward in those personal stories? As we know, not all students will have the same experiences as one another, and certainly not the same as ourselves, but they do all have experiences to write about: “getting up in the morning, getting dressed, coming to school” (Moore, 2015). As teachers, it is our job to focus in on those small moments or experiences, zoom in, and bring out all the details.
There are many ways teachers can “encourage young writers to uncover the real story they want to tell as they write” (Dorfman & Cappelli, 2007). As I discussed in my last blog post, students can create heart maps to unearth their treasure chests of ideas, their writing territories. Once writers see that they do, in fact, have things to write about, it is time to narrow down the topic and tell their story. This might be called a “small moment” narrative story.
My Small Moment Narrative Story
In Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature, K-6 (2007), Dorfman and Cappelli discuss how students can write about one important moment in time, “exploding” that moment through the use of tools like “snapshots, ‘thoughtshots,’ appealing to the senses, and lots of detail” (p. 79; more on these later in the post). The teacher can introduce small moment narrative stories to students by modeling their own. Read my own small moment story below:
The Time I Fell On My Face
My class was walking to the gym when it happened. It was a dreary November day and all the children were getting excited about winter break. On the walk from my kindergarten classroom to gym, we had to walk outside on the sidewalk because the buildings didn’t connect. Walking one by one, I was in the middle of the line when I fell. Before I knew what was happening, I felt myself trip over my own feet and fall on the sidewalk, face first. Blood was everywhere: my face, my knees, my hands, all scraped up. My teacher called my mom, who came to school later and picked me up to take me home. I was bandaged up, with Band-aids next to my right eyebrow, on my nose, and on my chin. Poor little Grace! The worst, but maybe the funniest, part of the story? Santa came to visit school the next week to take pictures with the kindergartners, and I had to get my picture with Santa with Band-aids all over my face!
While there are many times I have fallen on my face in my life (an embarrassing amount), I have narrowed my writing territory down to this one small moment that happened in probably less than five minutes, and expanded upon it to describe to the reader the trauma I felt as a kindergartner.
What I think is important to point out here is that these small moment stories do not have to be written in paragraphs like mine above is. For example, in brown girl dreaming (2016), each poem Jacqueline Woodson writes tells the story of a small moment in time. Just read “sunday afternoon on the front porch” (p. 199) and you’ll see how Woodson stretches the small moment of one Sunday afternoon with her grandfather so that readers see its single moment significance. Be sure students know that they can tell their stories in any medium they like: their writing is never limited.
Strategies to Slow Down Time
Above, I referred to several powerful tools writers can come back to to develop the content of their narratives and slow down time: “snapshots, ‘thoughtshots,’ appealing to the senses, and lots of detail” (Dorfman & Cappelli, p. 79). Because what makes any story enjoyable for its readers is the details, which are essential to good writing. Slow, specific scenes are built up through the use of anecdotes, sensory details, dialogue, and more. These might be things like “thoughtshots,” which are the addition of character thoughts to provide clarity and depth to a moment; or the use of dialogue to open up a scene and “learn more about the characters from what they say, how they say it, and what others say about them” (p. 72).
Additionally, many young writers often attempt to tell a story through, essentially, list making. “I did this, then this, then this, then this happened.” Adding descriptive details can move students away from this, so that their readers can more easily make connections and visualize the story in their minds. Students need experience using rich descriptions to write about the people, animals, objects, and places mentioned in their narratives. Just as strong sensory images (i.e., photographs, music, etc.) can help writers unearth memories to write about, writers need to appeal to the senses to bring the reader in closer. And these sensory descriptions don’t just stop at sight; writers should incorporate all five senses in their descriptions. Just read how beautifully Jacqueline Woodson incorporates different senses to help her readers visualize the scene in the first stanza of “gunnar’s children” (p. 50):
At dusk, just as the fireflies flicker on, my grandfather makes his way home. We see him coming slow down the road, his silver lunch box bouncing soft against his leg. Now, as her gets closer, we hear him singing
Isn’t that so romantic? Woodson’s appeal to the senses is what makes this poem (and many of her others) so powerful.
“Your Turn” Narrative Writing Minilesson
Finding the Point of Your Story
Mentor Texts (2007) is filled with excellent “your turn” minilessons to help students write more detailed and interesting stories. One lesson that I briefly mentioned in my last blog post was “Finding the Point of Your Story.” Many books and stories share similar topics or themes (i.e., family, friendship, home, etc.), but each one has a different message or “point” the author is trying to get at.
Download the PDF below to view the lesson I created with one of my graduate colleagues, Morgan Payne, to help students narrow a topic to find the “point” of their narrative stories, using the 2001 picture book The Other Side (also by Jacqueline Woodson!).
I have included just a sampling of strategies young writers can use to find the stories that are important to them and delve deeper. You can also check out a series of lessons/daily minilessons for strategies that one of my graduate professors, Dr. Frye, as come up with by downloading the PDF below.
What are some of your favorites? Do you have others I should know about? Leave a comment!
References Boelts, M. (2012). Happy like soccer. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press. Dorfman, L. R., & Cappelli, R. (2007). Chapter 4: When writers use a magnifying lens. In Mentor texts: Teaching writing through children's literature, K-6 (pp. 69-97). Portsmouth, NH: Stenhouse Publishers. Moore, B., & Two Writing Teachers. (2015, October 7). Why narrative writing matters. Retrieved from https://twowritingteachers.org/2015/10/07/why-narrative-writing-matters/ Woodson, J. (2001). The other side. MA: Fontana Press. Woodson, J. (2016). Brown girl dreaming. MA: Penguin.
Ms. Schmidt's Reading Blog 