The Third Wheel Teacher

Upper Elementary Made Easy

Building Focused Personal Narratives

Getting students to create personal narratives that are engaging and focused is one of the biggest challenges I face in writing. I've been using the Lucy Calkin's Units of Study for a few years now. One of my favorite parts is the analogy watermelons and seeds during the idea generation process for personal narrative writing. I've found my students really love to tell their stories, but they want to tell everything from the moment they got in the car to drive to the airport to the exact second they hopped into bed after returning from their trip. In other words, their stories turn into long…or really short…lists rather than giving the reader a deeper look into their experience.
personal narratives_tips and tricks

My solution has been to go more in depth on this important analogy. Personal narratives should be filled with emotion and the reader should be able to feel like they are there with the author. However, when students focus on a large event, they don't give these descriptive details because most of them just want to get the story out…and it is a long story! I can't tell you how many times I've gotten the story that goes from the moment they got in the car to go to Grandma's house until the moment they got out of the car when they returned…and 10 pages of writing later, it isn't at all engaging.

Focusing Personal Narratives – Start from the beginning.

focusing personal narrativesI've found by spending time on the front end really focusing in on what a small moment is I can delve deeper into the nuances of adding description more quickly and grow my writers more fully. To do this, I dedicate about half of our first personal narrative unit to finding and narrowing in on ideas. Yes, it sounds like a long time, but for my students that is what it takes. We even cut an actual watermelon to give them a connection to hang on to as they think about the topic. (Quick side note, don't buy seedless!! Did that on accident one year and had to scramble to come up with a connection… Sometimes authors forget to focus on the seeds, and their stories are a lot less interesting. *Whew*)

I try to work in a number of engaging activities that work through the gradual release model. First, I provide models and we work to sort them. Next, students generate their own examples and non-examples. Finally, we start moving into the process of picking an idea and focusing our topic into a specific small moment. It takes some time, and I try to give tons of models from my own life. However, within this first round of lessons about 80% of my kids really get the idea and start producing focused small moment writing. The other 20% typically need a little more one-on-one support to really get there, but they definitely make significant gains.

Generating Ideas for Personal Narratives

Modeling Small Moments for personal narrativesHere is a sample of one of the first activities we do to help my students generate ideas for personal narratives. This activity has them sorting examples and non-examples. They are given the ideas, and we discuss as a class. Students color-code the ideas as we work through them together. Then they cut and paste them into the correct category. I have a similar sort that they complete independently after we do this model together. I also put a card sort that is similar into my language arts centers to help give students extra practice.

The next step from here is having students take a blank organizer and generate 3 ideas that are watermelons and identify seeds within each. I have a graphic organizer to help them with this, and it really seems to help. Finally, from there we move on to actually starting to pick an idea and lay out their personal narratives (which is a completely different process).

I've discovered that this process really changes the tone of my writing classroom for the rest of the year. Any time I ask the students to write about a personal experience, they are much more focused and discussing the deeper pieces of the event instead of just giving the play-by-play. It also helps us build a shared vocabulary as we move forward.

Want your own copy of some of the materials I use for these lessons? Enter your email below for a free personal narrative mini-pack!

Get focused narratives

Tired of getting personal narratives that just ramble on?

Stop boring narratives with these free, easy-to-implement activities that will have your students writing like pros in no time!

Powered by ConvertKit
 

I hope this article gave you some ideas for helping your writers focus their personal narratives. If you’d like more ideas from The Third Wheel, be sure to follow me on Teachers Pay Teachers, Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram to keep up to date and on the latest tips, tools, and freebies for your classroom.

Comments

  3. Heather says

    I like this graphic organizer – it's cute and demonstrates the seed vs. watermelon idea nicely. Thanks for sharing! I used parts of Lucy Calkins' units last year, and although I found her style to be a little to intense and wordy for my taste, I was able to glean some brilliant ideas (including this watermelon vs. seed idea) and modify to suit my own needs. : )

    http://mrsrobinsonsclassroomblog.blogspot.com/

    Reply

  6. Sapphire Dawn says

    Your watermelon sheet is too cute. I'm unfamiliar with LC, but your presentation can certainly help with kiddos narrowing their ideas.

    Teaching overseas
    Sapphire Dawn

    Reply

  8. Miss Ice says

    Last year was my first year using Lucky and I have to admit I struggled with all the wording in the lessons. I'm hoping to find other teachers and bloggers who can provide neat things like this to help me teach it better this year. Thanks!

    Reply

  9. cindi says

    Love this organizer. We use UoS as well and this will be my first year in 3rd so I am excited to have this to use. (tear) I can't get the cute title to download correctly, but thanks for posting!!

    Reply

  11. Teaching Mommy says

    I teach 4th grade, and we're using it this year for the first time, too. I think the watermelon paper is great! I've tried out the writer's workshop before and can honestly say more of my kids enjoyed writing than with other ways I've taught it, but it's hard to figure out exactly what to teach, I think. I'm hoping her books will help with this. And I think when you're thinking about how wordy she is, remember this – you want to get the point across, but you can do it in your own way. We also have less time for writing than she calls for, so we're going to do each session in 2 days, using the mid lesson teaching point as a minilesson to start off the next day. We'll see how it goes!

    Reply

  12. Sara says

    I love the Units of Study, but I also love spicing it up! Thanks for sharing this. One thing I would add about Lucy's work is that all of that wording is just the way ONE teacher made it work in her classroom. If you focus on the bold print in the text and make it work for you, you'll be much happier. 🙂 Good luck this school year!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *