Hello,
This week has so much in store for us. This week I am going to focus on writing narratives. So if you are struggling to teach, support, or model for your students how to write a narrative story, then you have came to the right place!
After reading and reflecting on Chapter 5, Growing a Narrative from Beginning to End in Mentor Texts: Teaching Writing Through Children’s Literature, K-6, Dorfman and Cappelli have inspired me to take on writing narratives in a new way. The chapter focused on parts of a narrative, mentor texts to aid during instruction, specific struggles for students, and ways to overall strengthen your narrative!
We know that typical narratives begin with a beginning, followed by a middle, and end with, well, an end!
There are many other important literary elements you should include to strengthen your writing and make it more admirable by the audience. After all, we are writing for an audience, therefore, their engagement is crucial!
These elements include:
Character
Setting
Problem/Goal
Plot
Solution/Resolution
When you are beginning to teach narratives, Dorfman and Cappelli give several mentor texts that are very effective to include during your instruction:
Crab Moon by Ruth Horowitz
Shortcut by Donald Crews
Fireflies by Julie Brinckloe
Widget by Lyn Rossiter McFarland
Each one of these texts take their own approach to telling a narrative beginning to end! They are great to reference for your students and to gain ideas from! If you do not have them, I encourage you to get them or at least check them out!
Once students see how a narrative should be written, after looking at and reading these books ^^(the ones listed above, that I encouraged you to get!!), then it is time to start breaking those stories apart. Not really in depth, just into sections covering the beginning, middle, and end. Next, have students start brain storming stories of their own. They can do this and then share them with their partners. Allow kids to share with the class. Since students are not famailar with the flow of a story they may just end it by stopping, and not necessarily finishing the story. You can prompt them to continue by asking them, "Then what happened?". Challange the students to go back with their partners and tell their stories again, but this time, asking the same question, "then what happened?".
For early writers, they may attempt to write "bed-to-bed" stories. Dorfman and Cappelli state that these stories usually take place during late first grade or early second grade. Students will write about everything that happened from "sun-up to sun-down". This may seem like more of a list including tons of "and, then", more "and-thens", a few "nexts", and end with a loud and proud "THE END!". This is not a terrible thing, it is just how they are used to writing. We do not want to discourage this, but instead, build from this and progress as more developed writers. "They simply stop because they are tired of writing and don'y know where their story is going or what they need to do to end their piece successfully"( 2017, p. 116).
Picture books can be great resources when teaching students to create a story map or even simply telling a story from beginning to end! Try it!
Now to the nitty-gritty...
Beginning: Should introduce characters, setting, and possibly describe the problem/goal of the main character.
Middle: Attempts made to reach the goal, solve the problem, and/or describe experiences.
End: The end should leave the reader satisfied!!
Ways to strengthen the beginning? The mood! Set the mood by giving information about the main character: hopes, thoughts, feelings, and maybe a HINT of the problem, goal, or direction the story will take. Another way, SENSES! Use senses to describe! You should be able to visualize the settings, the characters, etc. It should be a "there in the moment" type of ordeal.
During the middle of the story, students should use bridge-paragraphs. These bridge-paragraphs should cover all of the action in a timely manner instead of them jumping in, saying it all, then moving on to the ending.
The ending... In many cases, the endings may tie back into the beginning. You will see that in the mentor texts. In some of the texts they ended by repeating a line from the beginning, discussing an emotion from the beginning, or ending with a question. Of course, there are other ways to end a story and tons of mentor texts to support that.
In the beginning, I encourage you to use the mentor texts to guide you. You may replicate or copy-cat certain things from them. That is fine. As you progress, try yo use writing ideas from your writers notebook, they are usually more personal and students will have a easier time developing them.
Self-Reflection: This is so important! Make sure your story met the criteria you were hoping to meet.
Point?
Purpose?
Target audience?
Ending?
Finally! Allow time for sharing. Students have just worked hard to complete this mater-piece and I am sure they cannot wait to share it with someone!
Hope I was able to offer you guys some thoughtful insight on writing narratives! Have fun trying new things!
Dorfman, L. R., Cappelli, R., & Hoyt, L. (2017). Mentor texts: Teaching writing through childrens literature, k-6. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.