"Kids are human beings who live in the world and have friendships and family, fights, troubles, drama, worries and moments of beauty--just like anybody"
-Two Writing Teachers
Narrative writing is an essential component of writing instruction. Allowing our students to create narrative writing pieces will show our students that we acknowledge and validate their lived experiences. While some students have not experienced elaborate or extravagant moments, each student has a story. In their post, "Why Narrative Writing Matters', the Two Writing Teachers discuss how our students experience life everyday. Students wake up, get dressed, go to school, eat lunch, etc. All of these small moments can turn into a narrative writing piece. "Life is experience" (Moore School, 2015).
This week, I created my own personal narrative piece. I created my entry through starting with a "small moment". I began to think of a small moment that I had experienced in my life recently. The small moment that I chose to write about is the day I graduated with my Bachelor's Degree. To begin my first draft, I drew a self portrait of myself on this special day. The next step was to think about key details about this moment in time. What was I wearing? What noises did I hear? What emotions was I feeling? Who was I interacting with? After digging deep to find details, I then created my narrative piece. See my example below:
How can we help students find a writing topic?
There are several avenues we can take to help our readers pick a topic to write about. Two strategies that I have used in my Writer's Notebook, is a "heart map" and "lists". I recently created a "heart map" to outline the people, places, and things that mean the most to me. If I get stuck on deciding a writing topic, I just refer back to my heart map. I can easily elaborate on the people and things that are the most important to me. I have also recently created a list of "100 things that I love". This list is composed of several things that I have a passion for. As I refer back to my list, I can easily generate a writing topic. I plan to use both of these strategies with my future students in order to help them find inspiration when they begin to map out their writer's notebook entries.
As explained in Mentor Texts, students should also be exposed to texts that can help guide them in the right direction as writers. An example of a Mentor Text that can be used to help writers convey emotion is Happy Like Soccer. The main character in the story experiences several different emotions as she plays the game she loves. She is always excited to play the sport, yet she is also sad when her Auntie isn't able to attend. I plan to use this picture book as a Mentor Text for my writers to help assist them in adding details to convey emotion in a writing piece.
Happy Like Soccer
Hand Maps
Another strategy that we can use to help our students write about emotions, is to create hand maps (Dorfman & Cappelli, 2017). Hand maps are an awesome strategy to use as students reflect on emotions they have felt in their lifetime. After teacher modeling, students are allowed to create their own personal hand map by tracing their hand on a piece of paper. The writers then write an emotion that they resonate with on each finger. Students write examples of each emotion they have felt in order to create a resource they can come back to later. The students can access their hand map to create a narrative writing piece! I have attached a Hand Map Lesson below:
Your Turn Lesson #3: Creating a Hand Map:
Lost and Found Cat
References
Dorfman, L. R., Cappelli, R., & Hoyt, L. (2017). Mentor texts: teaching writing through childrens literature, K-6 (2nd ed.). Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
Moore School, B. (2015, October 7). Retrieved from https://twowritingteachers.org/2015/10/07/why-narrative-writing-matters/.