narrative essay lesson middle school

A Step-by-Step Plan for Teaching Narrative Writing

July 29, 2018

Can't find what you are looking for? Contact Us

Listen to this post as a podcast:

Sponsored by Peergrade and Microsoft Class Notebook

This post contains Amazon Affiliate links. When you make a purchase through these links, Cult of Pedagogy gets a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you.

“Those who tell the stories rule the world.”  This proverb, attributed to the Hopi Indians, is one I wish I’d known a long time ago, because I would have used it when teaching my students the craft of storytelling. With a well-told story we can help a person see things in an entirely new way. We can forge new relationships and strengthen the ones we already have. We can change a law, inspire a movement, make people care fiercely about things they’d never given a passing thought.

But when we study storytelling with our students, we forget all that. Or at least I did. When my students asked why we read novels and stories, and why we wrote personal narratives and fiction, my defense was pretty lame: I probably said something about the importance of having a shared body of knowledge, or about the enjoyment of losing yourself in a book, or about the benefits of having writing skills in general.

I forgot to talk about the  power of story. I didn’t bother to tell them that the ability to tell a captivating story is one of the things that makes human beings extraordinary. It’s how we connect to each other. It’s something to celebrate, to study, to perfect. If we’re going to talk about how to teach students to write stories, we should start by thinking about why we tell stories at all . If we can pass that on to our students, then we will be going beyond a school assignment; we will be doing something transcendent.

Now. How do we get them to write those stories? I’m going to share the process I used for teaching narrative writing. I used this process with middle school students, but it would work with most age groups.

A Note About Form: Personal Narrative or Short Story?

When teaching narrative writing, many teachers separate personal narratives from short stories. In my own classroom, I tended to avoid having my students write short stories because personal narratives were more accessible. I could usually get students to write about something that really happened, while it was more challenging to get them to make something up from scratch.

In the “real” world of writers, though, the main thing that separates memoir from fiction is labeling: A writer might base a novel heavily on personal experiences, but write it all in third person and change the names of characters to protect the identities of people in real life. Another writer might create a short story in first person that reads like a personal narrative, but is entirely fictional. Just last weekend my husband and I watched the movie Lion and were glued to the screen the whole time, knowing it was based on a true story. James Frey’s book  A Million Little Pieces  sold millions of copies as a memoir but was later found to contain more than a little bit of fiction. Then there are unique books like Curtis Sittenfeld’s brilliant novel American Wife , based heavily on the early life of Laura Bush but written in first person, with fictional names and settings, and labeled as a work of fiction. The line between fact and fiction has always been really, really blurry, but the common thread running through all of it is good storytelling.

With that in mind, the process for teaching narrative writing can be exactly the same for writing personal narratives or short stories; it’s the same skill set. So if you think your students can handle the freedom, you might decide to let them choose personal narrative or fiction for a narrative writing assignment, or simply tell them that whether the story is true doesn’t matter, as long as they are telling a good story and they are not trying to pass off a fictional story as fact.

Here are some examples of what that kind of flexibility could allow:

• A student might tell a true story from their own experience, but write it as if it were a fiction piece, with fictional characters, in third person.
• A student might create a completely fictional story, but tell it in first person, which would give it the same feel as a personal narrative.
• A student might tell a true story that happened to someone else, but write it in first person, as if they were that person. For example, I could write about my grandmother’s experience of getting lost as a child, but I might write it in her voice.

If we aren’t too restrictive about what we call these pieces, and we talk about different possibilities with our students, we can end up with lots of interesting outcomes. Meanwhile, we’re still teaching students the craft of narrative writing.

A Note About Process: Write With Your Students

One of the most powerful techniques I used as a writing teacher was to do my students’ writing assignments with them. I would start my own draft at the same time as they did, composing “live” on the classroom projector, and doing a lot of thinking out loud so they could see all the decisions a writer has to make.

The most helpful parts for them to observe were the early drafting stage, where I just scratched out whatever came to me in messy, run-on sentences, and the revision stage, where I crossed things out, rearranged, and made tons of notes on my writing. I have seen over and over again how witnessing that process can really help to unlock a student’s understanding of how writing actually gets made.

A Narrative Writing Unit Plan

Before I get into these steps, I should note that there is no one right way to teach narrative writing, and plenty of accomplished teachers are doing it differently and getting great results. This just happens to be a process that has worked for me.

Step 1: Show Students That Stories Are Everywhere

Getting our students to tell stories should be easy. They hear and tell stories all the time. But when they actually have to put words on paper, they forget their storytelling abilities: They can’t think of a topic. They omit relevant details, but go on and on about irrelevant ones. Their dialogue is bland. They can’t figure out how to start. They can’t figure out how to end.

So the first step in getting good narrative writing from students is to help them see that they are already telling stories every day . They gather at lockers to talk about that thing that happened over the weekend. They sit at lunch and describe an argument they had with a sibling. Without even thinking about it, they begin sentences with “This one time…” and launch into stories about their earlier childhood experiences. Students are natural storytellers; learning how to do it well on paper is simply a matter of studying good models, then imitating what those writers do.

So start off the unit by getting students to tell their stories. In journal quick-writes, think-pair-shares, or by playing a game like Concentric Circles , prompt them to tell some of their own brief stories: A time they were embarrassed. A time they lost something. A time they didn’t get to do something they really wanted to do. By telling their own short anecdotes, they will grow more comfortable and confident in their storytelling abilities. They will also be generating a list of topic ideas. And by listening to the stories of their classmates, they will be adding onto that list and remembering more of their own stories.

And remember to tell some of your own. Besides being a good way to bond with students, sharing  your stories will help them see more possibilities for the ones they can tell.

Step 2: Study the Structure of a Story

Now that students have a good library of their own personal stories pulled into short-term memory, shift your focus to a more formal study of what a story looks like.

Use a diagram to show students a typical story arc like the one below. Then, using a simple story (try a video like The Present or Room ), fill out the story arc with the components from that story. Once students have seen this story mapped out, have them try it with another one, like a story you’ve read in class, a whole novel, or another short video.

Step 3: Introduce the Assignment

Up to this point, students have been immersed in storytelling. Now give them specific instructions for what they are going to do. Share your assignment rubric so they understand the criteria that will be used to evaluate them; it should be ready and transparent right from the beginning of the unit. As always, I recommend using a single point rubric for this.

Step 4: Read Models

Once the parameters of the assignment have been explained, have students read at least one model story, a mentor text that exemplifies the qualities you’re looking for. This should be a story on a topic your students can kind of relate to, something they could see themselves writing. For my narrative writing unit (see the end of this post), I wrote a story called “Frog” about a 13-year-old girl who finally gets to stay home alone, then finds a frog in her house and gets completely freaked out, which basically ruins the fun she was planning for the night.

They will be reading this model as writers, looking at how the author shaped the text for a purpose, so that they can use those same strategies in their own writing. Have them look at your rubric and find places in the model that illustrate the qualities listed in the rubric. Then have them complete a story arc for the model so they can see the underlying structure.

Ideally, your students will have already read lots of different stories to look to as models. If that isn’t the case, this list of narrative texts recommended by Cult of Pedagogy followers on Twitter would be a good place to browse for titles that might be right for your students. Keep in mind that we have not read most of these stories, so be sure to read them first before adopting them for classroom use.

Step 5: Story Mapping

At this point, students will need to decide what they are going to write about. If they are stuck for a topic, have them just pick something they can write about, even if it’s not the most captivating story in the world. A skilled writer could tell a great story about deciding what to have for lunch. If they are using the skills of narrative writing, the topic isn’t as important as the execution.

Have students complete a basic story arc for their chosen topic using a diagram like the one below. This will help them make sure that they actually have a story to tell, with an identifiable problem, a sequence of events that build to a climax, and some kind of resolution, where something is different by the end. Again, if you are writing with your students, this would be an important step to model for them with your own story-in-progress.

Step 6: Quick Drafts

Now, have students get their chosen story down on paper as quickly as possible: This could be basically a long paragraph that would read almost like a summary, but it would contain all the major parts of the story. Model this step with your own story, so they can see that you are not shooting for perfection in any way. What you want is a working draft, a starting point, something to build on for later, rather than a blank page (or screen) to stare at.

Step 7: Plan the Pacing

Now that the story has been born in raw form, students can begin to shape it. This would be a good time for a lesson on pacing, where students look at how writers expand some moments to create drama and shrink other moments so that the story doesn’t drag. Creating a diagram like the one below forces a writer to decide how much space to devote to all of the events in the story.

Step 8: Long Drafts

With a good plan in hand, students can now slow down and write a proper draft, expanding the sections of their story that they plan to really draw out and adding in more of the details that they left out in the quick draft.

Step 9: Workshop

Once students have a decent rough draft—something that has a basic beginning, middle, and end, with some discernible rising action, a climax of some kind, and a resolution, you’re ready to shift into full-on workshop mode. I would do this for at least a week: Start class with a short mini-lesson on some aspect of narrative writing craft, then give students the rest of the period to write, conference with you, and collaborate with their peers. During that time, they should focus some of their attention on applying the skill they learned in the mini-lesson to their drafts, so they will improve a little bit every day.

Topics for mini-lessons can include:

• How to weave exposition into your story so you don’t give readers an “information dump”
• How to carefully select dialogue to create good scenes, rather than quoting everything in a conversation
• How to punctuate and format dialogue so that it imitates the natural flow of a conversation
• How to describe things using sensory details and figurative language; also,  what  to describe…students too often give lots of irrelevant detail
• How to choose precise nouns and vivid verbs, use a variety of sentence lengths and structures, and add transitional words, phrases, and features to help the reader follow along
• How to start, end, and title a story

Step 10: Final Revisions and Edits

As the unit nears its end, students should be shifting away from revision , in which they alter the content of a piece, toward editing , where they make smaller changes to the mechanics of the writing. Make sure students understand the difference between the two: They should not be correcting each other’s spelling and punctuation in the early stages of this process, when the focus should be on shaping a better story.

One of the most effective strategies for revision and editing is to have students read their stories out loud. In the early stages, this will reveal places where information is missing or things get confusing. Later, more read-alouds will help them immediately find missing words, unintentional repetitions, and sentences that just “sound weird.” So get your students to read their work out loud frequently. It also helps to print stories on paper: For some reason, seeing the words in print helps us notice things we didn’t see on the screen.

To get the most from peer review, where students read and comment on each other’s work, more modeling from you is essential: Pull up a sample piece of writing and show students how to give specific feedback that helps, rather than simply writing “good detail” or “needs more detail,” the two comments I saw exchanged most often on students’ peer-reviewed papers.

Step 11: Final Copies and Publication

Once revision and peer review are done, students will hand in their final copies. If you don’t want to get stuck with 100-plus papers to grade, consider using Catlin Tucker’s station rotation model , which keeps all the grading in class. And when you do return stories with your own feedback, try using Kristy Louden’s delayed grade strategy , where students don’t see their final grade until they have read your written feedback.

Beyond the standard hand-in-for-a-grade, consider other ways to have students publish their stories. Here are some options:

• Stories could be published as individual pages on a collaborative website or blog.
• Students could create illustrated e-books out of their stories.
• Students could create a slideshow to accompany their stories and record them as digital storytelling videos. This could be done with a tool like Screencastify or Screencast-O-Matic .

So this is what worked for me. If you’ve struggled to get good stories from your students, try some or all of these techniques next time. I think you’ll find that all of your students have some pretty interesting stories to tell. Helping them tell their stories well is a gift that will serve them for many years after they leave your classroom. ♦

Want this unit ready-made?

If you’re a writing teacher in grades 7-12 and you’d like a classroom-ready unit like the one described above, including slideshow mini-lessons on 14 areas of narrative craft, a sample narrative piece, editable rubrics, and other supplemental materials to guide students through every stage of the process, take a look at my Narrative Writing unit . Just click on the image below and you’ll be taken to a page where you can read more and see a detailed preview of what’s included.

What to Read Next

Categories: Instruction , Podcast

Tags: English language arts , Grades 6-8 , Grades 9-12 , teaching strategies

52 Comments

Wow, this is a wonderful guide! If my English teachers had taught this way, I’m sure I would have enjoyed narrative writing instead of dreading it. I’ll be able to use many of these suggestions when writing my blog! BrP

Lst year I was so discouraged because the short stories looked like the quick drafts described in this article. I thought I had totally failed until I read this and realized I did not fai,l I just needed to complete the process. Thank you!

I feel like you jumped in my head and connected my thoughts. I appreciate the time you took to stop and look closely at form. I really believe that student-writers should see all dimensions of narrative writing and be able to live in whichever style and voice they want for their work.

Can’t thank you enough for this. So well curated that one can just follow it blindly and ace at teaching it. Thanks again!

Great post! I especially liked your comments about reminding kids about the power of storytelling. My favourite podcasts and posts from you are always about how to do things in the classroom and I appreciate the research you do.

On a side note, the ice breakers are really handy. My kids know each other really well (rural community), and can tune out pretty quickly if there is nothing new to learn about their peers, but they like the games (and can remember where we stopped last time weeks later). I’ve started changing them up with ‘life questions’, so the editable version is great!

I love writing with my students and loved this podcast! A fun extension to this narrative is to challenge students to write another story about the same event, but use the perspective of another “character” from the story. Books like Wonder (R.J. Palacio) and Wanderer (Sharon Creech) can model the concept for students.

Thank you for your great efforts to reveal the practical writing strategies in layered details. As English is not my first language, I need listen to your podcast and read the text repeatedly so to fully understand. It’s worthy of the time for some great post like yours. I love sharing so I send the link to my English practice group that it can benefit more. I hope I could be able to give you some feedback later on.

Thank you for helping me get to know better especially the techniques in writing narrative text. Im an English teacher for 5years but have little knowledge on writing. I hope you could feature techniques in writing news and fearute story. God bless and more power!

Thank you for this! I am very interested in teaching a unit on personal narrative and this was an extremely helpful breakdown. As a current student teacher I am still unsure how to approach breaking down the structures of different genres of writing in a way that is helpful for me students but not too restrictive. The story mapping tools you provided really allowed me to think about this in a new way. Writing is such a powerful way to experience the world and more than anything I want my students to realize its power. Stories are how we make sense of the world and as an English teacher I feel obligated to give my students access to this particular skill.

The power of story is unfathomable. There’s this NGO in India doing some great work in harnessing the power of storytelling and plots to brighten children’s lives and enlighten them with true knowledge. Check out Katha India here: http://bit.ly/KathaIndia

Thank you so much for this. I did not go to college to become a writing professor, but due to restructuring in my department, I indeed am! This is a wonderful guide that I will use when teaching the narrative essay. I wonder if you have a similar guide for other modes such as descriptive, process, argument, etc.?

Hey Melanie, Jenn does have another guide on writing! Check out A Step-by-Step Plan for Teaching Argumentative Writing .

Hi, I am also wondering if there is a similar guide for descriptive writing in particular?

Hey Melanie, unfortunately Jenn doesn’t currently have a guide for descriptive writing. She’s always working on projects though, so she may get around to writing a unit like this in the future. You can always check her Teachers Pay Teachers page for an up-to-date list of materials she has available. Thanks!

I want to write about the new character in my area

That’s great! Let us know if you need any supports during your writing process!

I absolutely adore this unit plan. I teach freshmen English at a low-income high school and wanted to find something to help my students find their voice. It is not often that I borrow material, but I borrowed and adapted all of it in the order that it is presented! It is cohesive, understandable, and fun. Thank you!!

So glad to hear this, Nicole!

Thanks sharing this post. My students often get confused between personal narratives and short stories. Whenever I ask them to write a short story, she share their own experiences and add a bit of fiction in it to make it interesting.

Thank you! My students have loved this so far. I do have a question as to where the “Frog” story mentioned in Step 4 is. I could really use it! Thanks again.

This is great to hear, Emily! In Step 4, Jenn mentions that she wrote the “Frog” story for her narrative writing unit . Just scroll down the bottom of the post and you’ll see a link to the unit.

I also cannot find the link to the short story “Frog”– any chance someone can send it or we can repost it?

This story was written for Jenn’s narrative writing unit. You can find a link to this unit in Step 4 or at the bottom of the article. Hope this helps.

I cannot find the frog story mentioned. Could you please send the link.? Thank you

Hi Michelle,

The Frog story was written for Jenn’s narrative writing unit. There’s a link to this unit in Step 4 and at the bottom of the article.

Debbie- thanks for you reply… but there is no link to the story in step 4 or at the bottom of the page….

Hey Shawn, the frog story is part of Jenn’s narrative writing unit, which is available on her Teachers Pay Teachers site. The link Debbie is referring to at the bottom of this post will take you to her narrative writing unit and you would have to purchase that to gain access to the frog story. I hope this clears things up.

Thank you so much for this resource! I’m a high school English teacher, and am currently teaching creative writing for the first time. I really do value your blog, podcast, and other resources, so I’m excited to use this unit. I’m a cyber school teacher, so clear, organized layout is important; and I spend a lot of time making sure my content is visually accessible for my students to process. Thanks for creating resources that are easy for us teachers to process and use.

Do you have a lesson for Informative writing?

Hey Cari, Jenn has another unit on argumentative writing , but doesn’t have one yet on informative writing. She may develop one in the future so check back in sometime.

I had the same question. Informational writing is so difficult to have a good strong unit in when you have so many different text structures to meet and need text-dependent writing tasks.

Creating an informational writing unit is still on Jenn’s long list of projects to get to, but in the meantime, if you haven’t already, check out When We All Teach Text Structures, Everyone Wins . It might help you out!

This is a great lesson! It would be helpful to see a finished draft of the frog narrative arc. Students’ greatest challenge is transferring their ideas from the planner to a full draft. To see a full sample of how this arc was transformed into a complete narrative draft would be a powerful learning tool.

Hi Stacey! Jenn goes into more depth with the “Frog” lesson in her narrative writing unit – this is where you can find a sample of what a completed story arc might look. Also included is a draft of the narrative. If interested in checking out the unit and seeing a preview, just scroll down to the bottom of the post and click on the image. Hope this helps!

Helped me learn for an entrance exam thanks very much

Is the narrative writing lesson you talk about in https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/narrative-writing/

Also doable for elementary students you think, and if to what levels?

Love your work, Sincerely, Zanyar

Hey Zanyar,

It’s possible the unit would work with 4th and 5th graders, but Jenn definitely wouldn’t recommend going any younger. The main reason for this is that some of the mini-lessons in the unit could be challenging for students who are still concrete thinkers. You’d likely need to do some adjusting and scaffolding which could extend the unit beyond the 3 weeks. Having said that, I taught 1st grade and found the steps of the writing process, as described in the post, to be very similar. Of course learning targets/standards were different, but the process itself can be applied to any grade level (modeling writing, using mentor texts to study how stories work, planning the structure of the story, drafting, elaborating, etc.) Hope this helps!

This has made my life so much easier. After teaching in different schools systems, from the American, to British to IB, one needs to identify the anchor standards and concepts, that are common between all these systems, to build well balanced thematic units. Just reading these steps gave me the guidance I needed to satisfy both the conceptual framework the schools ask for and the standards-based practice. Thank you Thank you.

Would this work for teaching a first grader about narrative writing? I am also looking for a great book to use as a model for narrative writing. Veggie Monster is being used by his teacher and he isn’t connecting with this book in the least bit, so it isn’t having a positive impact. My fear is he will associate this with writing and I don’t want a negative association connected to such a beautiful process and experience. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thank you for any information you can provide!

Although I think the materials in the actual narrative writing unit are really too advanced for a first grader, the general process that’s described in the blog post can still work really well.

I’m sorry your child isn’t connecting with The Night of the Veggie Monster. Try to keep in mind that the main reason this is used as a mentor text is because it models how a small moment story can be told in a big way. It’s filled with all kinds of wonderful text features that impact the meaning of the story – dialogue, description, bold text, speech bubbles, changes in text size, ellipses, zoomed in images, text placement, text shape, etc. All of these things will become mini-lessons throughout the unit. But there are lots of other wonderful mentor texts that your child might enjoy. My suggestion for an early writer, is to look for a small moment text, similar in structure, that zooms in on a problem that a first grader can relate to. In addition to the mentor texts that I found in this article , you might also want to check out Knuffle Bunny, Kitten’s First Full Moon, When Sophie Gets Angry Really Really Angry, and Whistle for Willie. Hope this helps!

I saw this on Pinterest the other day while searching for examples of narritives units/lessons. I clicked on it because I always click on C.o.P stuff 🙂 And I wasn’t disapointed. I was intrigued by the connection of narratives to humanity–even if a student doesn’t identify as a writer, he/she certainly is human, right? I really liked this. THIS clicked with me.

A few days after I read the P.o.C post, I ventured on to YouTube for more ideas to help guide me with my 8th graders’ narrative writing this coming spring. And there was a TEDx video titled, “The Power of Personal Narrative” by J. Christan Jensen. I immediately remembered the line from the article above that associated storytelling with “power” and how it sets humans apart and if introduced and taught as such, it can be “extraordinary.”

I watched the video and to the suprise of my expectations, it was FANTASTIC. Between Jennifer’s post and the TEDx video ignited within me some major motivation and excitement to begin this unit.

Thanks for sharing this with us! So glad that Jenn’s post paired with another text gave you some motivation and excitement. I’ll be sure to pass this on to Jenn!

Thank you very much for this really helpful post! I really love the idea of helping our students understand that storytelling is powerful and then go on to teach them how to harness that power. That is the essence of teaching literature or writing at any level. However, I’m a little worried about telling students that whether a piece of writing is fact or fiction does not matter. It in fact matters a lot precisely because storytelling is powerful. Narratives can shape people’s views and get their emotions involved which would, in turn, motivate them to act on a certain matter, whether for good or for bad. A fictional narrative that is passed as factual could cause a lot of damage in the real world. I believe we should. I can see how helping students focus on writing the story rather than the truth of it all could help refine the needed skills without distractions. Nevertheless, would it not be prudent to teach our students to not just harness the power of storytelling but refrain from misusing it by pushing false narratives as factual? It is true that in reality, memoirs pass as factual while novels do as fictional while the opposite may be true for both cases. I am not too worried about novels passing as fictional. On the other hand, fictional narratives masquerading as factual are disconcerting and part of a phenomenon that needs to be fought against, not enhanced or condoned in education. This is especially true because memoirs are often used by powerful people to write/re-write history. I would really like to hear your opinion on this. Thanks a lot for a great post and a lot of helpful resources!

Thank you so much for this. Jenn and I had a chance to chat and we can see where you’re coming from. Jenn never meant to suggest that a person should pass off a piece of fictional writing as a true story. Good stories can be true, completely fictional, or based on a true story that’s mixed with some fiction – that part doesn’t really matter. However, what does matter is how a student labels their story. We think that could have been stated more clearly in the post , so Jenn decided to add a bit about this at the end of the 3rd paragraph in the section “A Note About Form: Personal Narrative or Short Story?” Thanks again for bringing this to our attention!

You have no idea how much your page has helped me in so many ways. I am currently in my teaching credential program and there are times that I feel lost due to a lack of experience in the classroom. I’m so glad I came across your page! Thank you for sharing!

Thanks so much for letting us know-this means a whole lot!

No, we’re sorry. Jenn actually gets this question fairly often. It’s something she considered doing at one point, but because she has so many other projects she’s working on, she’s just not gotten to it.

I couldn’t find the story

Hi, Duraiya. The “Frog” story is part of Jenn’s narrative writing unit, which is available on her Teachers Pay Teachers site. The link at the bottom of this post will take you to her narrative writing unit, which you can purchase to gain access to the story. I hope this helps!

I am using this step-by-step plan to help me teach personal narrative story writing. I wanted to show the Coca-Cola story, but the link says the video is not available. Do you have a new link or can you tell me the name of the story so I can find it?

Thank you for putting this together.

Hi Corri, sorry about that. The Coca-Cola commercial disappeared, so Jenn just updated the post with links to two videos with good stories. Hope this helps!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

• Our Mission

A Systematic Approach to Teaching Narrative Writing

Clear strategies for each stage of the writing process help students improve their writing and serve as effective readers for their peers.

“I’ll never forget the colors,” I often read in student reflections.

As a middle school language arts teacher, I’ve developed a systematic approach to writing that helps students improve their storytelling skills. It includes strategies for writing in a variety of genres, such as personal narrative, memoir, and creative nonfiction. And in the revision stage I teach a color-coded approach to analyzing details that helps students see clearly what kinds of details they’ve used—and which they haven’t. Apparently this approach really sticks with my students.

When these strategies are used together, they help students improve their writing skills while also fostering relationships among themselves as they act as sounding boards for each other’s work.

Prewriting Q&A as a Source of New Ideas

Prewriting is an essential part of the writing process. If ideas aren’t flowing, however, some students may become stalled, with a lack of ideas acting as a roadblock for them. To get the ball rolling, I pair students together for prewriting conversations.

To begin, I share one of my own stories to demonstrate the art of storytelling. Next, I give students the opportunity to discuss their own story ideas with a partner. Then, as I walk around listening to their conversations, I’ll pause every now and then and ask a few students whose ideas piqued my interest to share their story ideas aloud with the entire group.

Next, I’ll demonstrate asking a series of questions to the student who is sharing aloud, explaining to the class that this strategy can help them dive deeper as writers. Students will continue their discussions in pairs, eliciting as many details as possible from the storyteller through questioning.

They might ask:

• “How was the narrator feeling at that moment?”
• “What would happen if…”
• “Can you help me picture the character?”

This type of thoughtful questioning helps students visualize the scene more vividly and replaces initial writing jitters with fun and flexibility.

They jot down their ideas with words, pictures, bullets, or anything else that helps them solidify the memories from their spoken stories now that they are ready to prewrite independently.

To See What You’re Writing, Act It Out

Instead of summarizing a whole story from beginning to end, I want students to create a writing piece based on a brief period that includes vivid detail. I’ve found that having students act out a scene helps them grasp this concept. 

First, I’ll have students read aloud a few pages from our class book. Then, in small groups, they’ll act out the scene. “Now that you’ve acted it out, how long do you think this moment would have taken in real life?” I’ll ask. There will be a friendly debate. In the end, students will realize that the scene was a moment of time told with meaningful details, whether they said it took 30 seconds or 10 minutes.

Students then deconstruct the scene they just acted out by creating a timeline of key character actions. For example, using pages 9–10 of The Glass Castle , by Jeannette Walls, the scene breakdown might look like this:

• At age 3, Jeannette is standing on a chair cooking hot dogs in the kitchenette and feeding them to her dog.
• Her dress catches on fire, sending flames up her body.
• Jeannette’s mom, painting in the next room, hears her scream and enters the kitchen.
• Mom uses an army surplus blanket to put the fire out.
• Mom, Jeannette, and brother Brian run to the neighbor’s house to get help.
• The neighbor drops her laundry she was hanging on the line and races to take them to the hospital, saying nothing.

Students will then work independently to apply the same strategy to their own ideas, focusing on showing rather than telling the entire story. Students will share their lists with their groups and then act out each other’s ideas.

The following conversation suggestions help students clarify and solidify their ideas.

Beginning, ending, and timing: Where does the heart of this moment start? Where does it end? When one student describes a moment that feels excessively long, the rest of the group suggests methods to shorten it. If a student has a moment that is too short, the group helps to extend it.

Characters: What is each character doing? What’s their motivation? What do they look like? How are they acting?

Setting: Where and when is this taking place? What’s going on around your characters?

Dialogue: What’s being said, how, and by whom?

Internal thinking: What are the characters thinking?

Students are now ready to move on to independent writing and complete a full draft.

Color-Coding Writing as a Detail-Oriented Strategy

Following the drafting phase, I teach students a variety of revising techniques. Every day I introduce a new one—and they’re color-coded to make it easier for students to distinguish between them. We might, for example, focus on character details one day. First, students will find vivid character descriptions they love from the read-aloud or their own independent reading. Then, they’ll add their own character descriptions to their writing, highlighting them in a particular color.

I encourage students to incorporate each color throughout their drafts. If character details are represented by blue, for example, blue highlighting should be used in the beginning, middle, and end of their pieces. Other color-coded strategies include setting details, figurative language, sensory details, dialogue, and internal thinking.

The use of assorted colors allows students to clearly see areas that have been enriched with vivid details and areas that have not. This visual strategy benefits learners of all levels by instilling confidence and a sense of accomplishment as rainbows of color emerge throughout their work.

This color-coding approach also aids in peer editing and teacher conferencing by encouraging meaningful conversations like this: “I see you’ve developed thoughtfully crafted blues in the beginning to describe the Mom character. How can you assist readers in picturing and getting to know your other characters? How can you incorporate more blues later to describe them?”

To showcase daily accomplishments, students add their favorite highlighted lines to the classroom bulletin boards. While students could easily copy and paste their examples into a shared class Google Doc, I’ve found that they’re more engaged when there’s movement and camaraderie, and they like having their words physically present in the classroom.

Recently I taped a piece of bulletin board paper for students to write on in the front of the classroom and another in the back. A student was waiting patiently for others to finish at the front. I encouraged him to go write his favorite line in the back since there was no wait and it offered more space to write.

“No thanks,” he chirped. “I want everyone to see mine when they walk into the room.”

PRESTO PLANS

prestO PLANS

ENGLISH TEACHER RESOURCES

Sent straight to your inbox

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS

Sign up to receive 10 ready-to-use ELA resources your students will love! 

10 FREE ELA RESOURCES

Teaching Students How to Annotate Poetry

8 Ways Teachers Can Celebrate Student Success 

Bulletin Board Ideas for Middle & High School English

ON THE BLOG

teacher favorites

an ELA facebook community

TEACHERS' LOUNGE

join us in the

Engage your students as soon as they walk into your classroom with my best-selling, full-year bell-ringer set. Each day includes a unique and creative task. Topics include grammar, vocabulary, writing, and figurative language.  

Full Year of English  Bell-Ringers (Vol 3)

teacher resource

Top categories, i'm bonnie from presto plans.

I’m a curriculum writer, literacy educator, and all around book lover with a passion for helping English teachers engage their students with creative, high-quality resources. My mission? To make teaching English a whole lot easier for you, teacher friend! 

Hello, Teachers! 

10 Tips for Teaching Personal Narrative Writing in Middle School ELA

One of my favorite middle school ELA writing activities for the beginning of the school year is a personal narrative essay . I find this assignment is a great way for us to learn a lot about who our students are – as writers, and as people! It’s a great way to build foundational relationships with new students and set everyone up for a positive year!

Here’s how I like to set up personal narrative essay writing in the classroom:

1. Teach about the Genre

To begin, I like to explore the idea of personal narrative writing . While many of our middle school ELA students have written other types of essays before, this is often the first time they encounter this the personal narrative writing genre. First, I like to ask students if they have ever heard of personal essays and guide a brief class discussion.

Personal narratives create a valuable opportunity for students to share relevant stories from their own lives. Usually, this type of writing is designed to provoke an emotional reaction. Often, they find that personal narratives can be one of the most enjoyable writing assignments in ELA class!

2. Help them Choose a Topic

I find that one of our students’ biggest roadblocks to writing a personal narrative essay is the fact they think they don’t have anything worthwhile to say!

When this inevitably happens, I like to remind them that personal narratives can encompass a broad range of topics. As they plan their writing, they can choose to write about a single event, or an overall experience. For example, they might like to highlight on a moment in time. Alternatively, they could focus on a single thing that spanned a number of years (developing a skill at swimming lessons or dance class, for example). Even the simplest story can make an excellent topic for a personal narrative essay, as long as it is presented in a powerful way.

I also like to emphasize that the most important part of a personal narrative is that the writing has a purpose. For example:

• A funny story might enlighten readers on a lesson learned the hard way.
• A scary story might serve as a warning or wake up call.
• A touching story might inspire others to be a better person or view the world from a different perspective.

Sometimes I even like to share one of my favorite quotes. The saying (which is often attributed to the Dalai Lama) goes, “If you think you’re too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito!” This usually reassures our middle school ELA students that we all have the ability to make a powerful impact!

If they are stuck…

If the class still seems stuck on choosing a topic, I like to set stations up around the room and break students into small groups. Next, I provide them with task card prompts at each station to get them thinking about their various life experiences that might make a good topic for a personal narrative essay.

When they arrive at each station, they read the card. Each member of the group briefly shares a story that relates to the prompt, and students take a few minutes to jot down a few possible ideas on their brainstorming sheet. As they move through the stations and repeat the process, they should generate a number of different ideas to consider.

When their sheet is full, I invite them to narrow down their choices by considering their answers to the following questions:

• What are you most inspired by or excited to write about? 
• What might be the most interesting for others to read? 
• Which topic can be told with a clear series of events and interesting details or enticing descriptions? 
• Which story has a thought-provoking message or point? 

3. Share Two Important Questions

As the class works through the brainstorming process, they need to also consider the fact that personal narrative essays are meant to be shared with others. I will read their work when I grade it, of course, and I also like to share and display students’ writing around my classroom.

With this in mind, I like to invite students to consider two questions before they get too deep into their initial draft:

• Am I comfortable sharing this story with others?
• Will people be able to relate to my experiences and what I learned?

When thinking about these questions, if the student cannot respond with an enthusiastic “yes” to both, it is time to go back to the brainstorming sheet and choose a different topic. But if their topic passes this important self-check, they can keep going!

4. Start With the End in Mind

Now, it’s time for students to step back and consider the purpose of their writing. In this section of the lesson , I encourage the middle school ELA class to think about the “heart” of the story. In other words, what do they want the audience to notice and consider as they read?

This is also an opportunity for students to consider their own purpose for writing. Some questions I like to ask are:

• Why do you want to share this story?
• What do you want people to feel as they read your personal narrative essay?
• What should the lasting impression of this story be on your reader?

5. Consider Your Audience

As part of the pre-planning process, I also like to remind middle schoolers of who their audience for this task will be. After all, personal stories should be shared with others!

I find that sometimes students approach an assignment from a different perspective depending on who will be reading their written work. This is why I like to make it very clear about the audience for their finished writing upfront.

There are many options for sharing students’ written work. Sometimes, after the essays are written, I have students sit and read them aloud to small groups of their peers. I also usually invite them to include their personal narratives in their portfolio of work from the year, which can be accessed by parents and guardians through an online portal. I may also keep a copy of their personal narratives to share with families during student-led conferences.

In some cases, a conversation with students about how they would like their words and ideas to be shared can be useful. They may surprise you with their own ideas. For example, they might like to post excerpts from their personal narratives to a blog, or even make them into a podcast! 

6. Plan Out Your Story Elements

Once you have addressed the issues of topic and audience, it’s time to consider the elements of a personal narrative.

Characters:

I like to emphasize that while the writer is the main character, a personal narrative essay usually involves other characters as well. When preparing to write, I invite students to consider:

• Who else is involved in the story or event?
• What are their character traits, and how will you show them through your writing?
• What is your relationship like with this person (or people?)

Once the characters are established, a next step for students is to consider the setting. For example, if location is important to the story, I might ask the class how they will convey a sense of place. 

Here, I find it helps to brainstorm sensory details to include. I like to ask the class about the weather, time of day, sounds (for example, birds chirping, crowds, rain on the roof) and other details. These can help add color to the overall scene.

During the lesson , I like to explain that most personal narratives include one of the four types of conflict. This is sometimes new information for my middle school ELA students! I find it helps to ask the following questions:

• Is there conflict between you and another person in the story? (person vs. person) 
• Are you struggling with some type of inner turmoil or struggling to make a decision? (person vs. self) 
• Are you in conflict with the natural elements? (person vs. environment)
• Are you challenging an element of government or society? (person vs. society)

7. Provide an Organizational Framework

As we discuss the organizational framework of a personal narrative essay, middle school ELA students usually notice similarities to traditional story writing. During this process, a graphic organizer can support them with their planning.

Planning the Beginning of the Essay:

I remind them that the beginning of their essay should provide a captivating hook, establishing the basic details of the story. This can include background information, as well as information about the characters and setting. Most importantly, I like to reinforce that this is where they need to establish themselves as the main character! Depending on the topic, the students might introduce the conflict in this section as well.

Planning the Middle of the Essay :

As they move on to the middle of the personal narrative, I like to tell middle school ELA students to dive even more deeply into the situation, problem, or event they are describing. This helps their reader connect with the story. To do this, I also like to invite them to consider the character’s experiences (how they were feeling and what they were thinking). Just like in traditional fiction, this is also the place to build to some kind of climax.

Planning the Conclusion of their Essay:

Finally, I have students consider how they plan to conclude their personal narrative writing ELA task. In this section, they will want to tie up any loose ends, and identify any key messages they want to leave with the reader. As they organize their ideas, I ask them to think about a few things: 

• What could the reader learn from your experience?
• Is there a moral or lesson the reader might consider in their own life?  
• Will your story leave the reader laughing, in tears, or ready to take action?  

One thing I emphasize is that students who are unfamiliar with personal narrative writing will probably want to stick quite closely to this planning format at first. As they become more comfortable with this type of writing task, they will gain more confidence in their own style, and take more creative risks.

8. Share Writing Strategies

Now it’s time for the fun part – the writing itself! Before my middle school ELA students write their essays in earnest, I offer a few tips to get them started.

First, I remind them to write their narrative essays in first person. After all, they’re telling their own stories! We discuss the idea of being “true to your voice” as a writer, and consider how the students wish to tell their personal stories. A humorous, witty, inspiring or sad story will all require a different tone – and whatever direction the student chooses to go in, the writing should be consistent.

Next, I like to offer a few tips about engaging the reader . Dialogue can add color and vibrancy to a personal narrative. Vivid imagery and sensory details can show, rather than tell, a sense of place or emotional connection. I love sharing the sample sentence, “Her face flushed to a shocking shade of red.” This is much more effective than, “She was embarrassed.”

9. Allow Time For Peer Editing

In my classroom, I like to leave a period or two for peer editing and revisions at the end of the writing process.

The first time, I encourage ELA students to read their personal narrative writing aloud. Or – even better – they can have a peer read their work back to them. This is a great starting point for finding mistakes or weak spots in the writing that need to be changed. The second time through, students can use a checklist to edit the work in sections and offer suggestions for improvement.

By breaking the editing process down into three key areas (grammar, content, and writing structure), I find students can keep their feedback constructive, focused and efficient. Finally, I leave time for the students to go over their writing again, making spelling and grammar corrections to ensure they turn in their best work.

10. Give Options for Sharing

It’s important to remember that each student has their own personal comfort level about sharing their work with a large group. A brief survey (either on paper or via Google Forms) is a great way to check in on students and find out how they would like to share their writing.

Here are some choices I like to offer:

• sharing their personal narrative essay through a pre-recorded podcast or video
• reading their essay in front of the class
• presenting their work to a small group of their peers
• booking a private meeting with me (usually at lunch) to go through their essay together

There you have it! I hope your middle school ELA students love writing personal narrative essays as much as mine do!

If you’re looking for more unique writing ideas for middle and high school, check out 5 Outside the Box Creative Writing Assignments in ELA !

Students stuck in a writing rut? Here are 8 Ways to Engage Reluctant Writers .

share this post

VISIT THE BLOG

Snowball writing: collaborative writing activity, 10 ideas to make your teachers’ lounge a positive space.

Send students on an online date with a book

7 bell-ringer ideas for middle and high school english.

Search the blog for what you are teaching

PRIVACY   |

CONTACT   |

© PRESTO PLANS  |

I’m Bonnie, a curriculum writer, literacy educator, and all around book lover on a mission to make English teachers’ lives a whole lot easier! 

resources sent to your inbox!

10 FREE ENGLISH TEACHER

@PRESTOPLANS

FIND ME ON 

sent straight to your inbox!

10 days of ELA TEACHER

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Writing Curriculum

Teach Narrative Writing With The New York Times

This teaching guide, part of our eight-unit writing curriculum, includes daily writing prompts, lessons based on selected mentor texts, and an invitation for students to participate in our 100-word personal narrative contest.

By The Learning Network

Stories can thrill, wound, delight, uplift and teach. Telling a story vividly and powerfully is a vital skill that is deeply valued across all cultures, past and present — and narrative writing is, of course, a key genre for literacy instruction at every level.

When your students think “New York Times,” they probably think of our 172-year history of award-winning journalism, and may not even realize that The Times today is full of personal narratives — on love and family , but also on how we relate to animals , live with disabilities or navigate anxiety . If you flip or scroll through sections of the paper, you’ll see that personal writing is everywhere, and often ranks among the most popular pieces The Times publishes each week.

At The Learning Network, we’ve been posting writing prompts every school day for over a decade now, and many of them invite personal narrative. Inspired by Times articles of all kinds, the prompts ask students to tell us about their passions and their regrets, their most embarrassing moments and their greatest achievements. Thousands of students around the world respond each month, and each week during the school year we call out our favorite responses .

In this unit we’re taking it a step further and turning our narrative-writing opportunities into a contest that invites students to tell their own stories. Below, you’ll find plenty of ideas and resources to get your students reading, writing and thinking about their own stories, including:

✔ New narrative-writing prompts every week.

✔ Daily opportunities for students to have an authentic audience for their writing via posting comments to our forums.

✔ Guided practice with mentor texts that include writing exercises.

✔ A clear, achievable end-product (our contest) modeled on real-world writing.

✔ The chance for students to have their work published in The New York Times.

Here’s how it works.

Start with personal-narrative prompts for low-stakes writing.

Related Article | Related Picture Prompt

Every week during the school year we publish new narrative writing prompts on a vast array of topics via our Student Opinion and Picture Prompts columns. These prompts can be a starting point to help your students start reflecting on their lives and the stories they have to tell.

Each prompt is inspired by a Times article, which is free if you access it through our site, and all are open for comment for students 13 and up. Every comment is read by Learning Network editors before it is approved.

Teachers have told us they use our prompts as an opportunity for daily writing practice, a communal space where students can practice honing voice, trying new techniques and writing for a real audience. And if students are writing formal personal narrative essays, whether for college applications, for our contest or for any other reason, our prompts might serve as inspiration to help them find topics.

Student Opinion Questions

We publish a new Student Opinion question every school day, including many that invite personal writing. Students will read a related Times article and then respond to questions that help them think about how it applies to their own lives, like these:

“ What Cultural Traditions Are Important to You? ” “ Has Forgiving Someone Ever Made You Feel Better? ” “ How Do You Get Over Rejection? ”

You can find them all, as they publish, here . Or check out our collection of 445 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing for years-worth of evergreen questions, organized into categories like family, school, personality and childhood memories.

Picture Prompts

These accessible, image-driven prompts inspire a variety of kinds of writing and we publish them Tuesday through Friday during the school year. Each week we post at least one prompt that asks students to share experiences from their lives, such as this one that invites students to write about memories of their childhood homes , and one that asks them to tell a story about a moment from their lives inspired by an image, such as this one .

You can find all of our Picture Prompts, as they publish, here . At the end of each school year, we round them all up and categorize them by genre of writing. Take a look at our collections from 2017 , 2018 , 2019 , 2020 , 2021 , 2022 and 2023 and scroll down to look for the categories like “What story does this image inspire for you?” and “Share experiences from your own life” to find many prompts that can inspire narratives.

A special “rehearsal space” for teenagers to experiment writing 100-word narratives.

To help with our Tiny Memoir contest, we posted a student forum last year asking, “ What Story From Your Life Can You Tell in 100 Words? ” In it, we lead students through a few questions, and provide a few examples, to show them how. It is still open for comment. We hope that as they search for topics and try out techniques, students will post their drafts here for others to read and comment on.

Read mentor texts and try some of the “writer’s moves” we spotlight.

The Times is full of wonderful writing that can serve as mentor texts for helping students look at the various elements of the genre and think about how to weave specific craft moves into their own writing. We have a couple of ways students can use them for narrative writing.

Mentor Texts Lessons

For our 2023 Tiny Memoir Contest for Students, in which students are invited to describe a meaningful true moment from their lives in 100 words or fewer, we have a set of mentor texts, all of which can be found in our step-by-step guide: How to Write a 100-Word Narrative: A Guide for Our Tiny Memoir Contest . The 25 texts we use can also be found in this PDF .

During the years when we ran a Personal Narrative Contest that allowed students 600 words to tell a story, we broke narrative writing into several key elements and spotlighted a mentor text that does a particularly good job at each. All of them are still applicable to our new contest, which spotlights the same qualities, just in miniature. They have also been woven in to our step-by-step guide :

Tell a story about a small but memorable event or moment in your life.

Use details to show, not tell.

Write from your own point of view, in your real voice.

Use dialogue effectively.

Drop the reader into a scene.

Tell a complete story, with a true narrative arc.

Reflect on the experience and give the reader a take-away.

After students read each of the mentor texts on this list and focus on a specific technique, we invite them to “Now Try This” via an exercise that helps them practice that element. Then, we provide additional mentor text examples, as well as a list of questions to consider while reading any of them. The goal is to demystify what good writing looks like, and encourage students to practice concrete exercises to use those techniques.

Annotated by the Author

But our favorite mentor texts to assign? The work of the teenage winners of our narrative contests. Here are the 2019 , 2020 and 2021 collections of our Personal Narrative Contest. And here are the winners of our first-ever 100-Word Narrative Contest . Which of these pieces do your students like best? What “writer’s moves” might they emulate in their own work?

We also invited three teenagers who won our 2019 contest to annotate their winning narratives for our “Annotated by the Author” series. In these pieces, they demystify their writing process and share ideas other students can try in their own essays.

Annotated by the Author: ‘Speechless’

Annotated by the Author: ‘Pants on Fire’

Annotated by the Author: ‘Cracks in the Pavement’

In addition, we have a piece annotated by the college-aged author of a winning Modern Love piece. In Annotated by the Author: ‘Why Can’t Men Say “I Love You” to Each Other?’ Ricardo F. Jaramillo tells us how to make your reader want to keep reading, how to balance scenes and ideas, why you can’t write a personal essay without “looking inside,” and much more.

Enter our “ Tiny Memoir” Personal Narrative Essay Contest .

At this point in the unit, your students will have practiced writing about their lives using our many prompts. They will also have read several mentor texts, and practiced elements of personal writing with each one. Now, we hope, they can produce a polished piece of writing that brings it all together.

For three years, we ran a personal narrative contest that asked for a “short, powerful story about a meaningful life experience” in 600 words or less. But last year, we debuted our Tiny Memoir Contest that challenged students to tell us a story from their lives in just 100 words. The results blew us away. Teachers told us it was one of the most engaging assignments they gave all year and that the word limit made students’ writing much more focused and powerful. So this year, we’re running it again. We hope this contest will be fun for your students, and a useful exercise if they are going on to write longer pieces, such as a college essay.

Beyond a caution to write no more than 100 words, our contest is fairly open-ended. We’re not asking students to write to a particular theme or use a specific structure or style; instead, we encourage them to experiment and produce something that they feel represents their real voice, telling a tale that matters to them.

All student work will be read by Times editors or journalists and/or by educators from around the country. Winners will have their work published on our site and, perhaps, in the print New York Times.

Though our 100-word contest is slightly different than the original, we still recommend that before students submit, they watch this two-minute video in which student winners from past years share advice on the writing, editing and submission process. Ask students:

What techniques did these students employ that helped make their entries successful?

What did these students gain from having entered this contest? What were some of the challenges they encountered?

What advice can your students use as they work on their own submissions?

This contest will run from Oct. 4 to Nov. 1, 2023. We will link the official announcement here when it publishes, but in the meantime, here are last year’s rules and guidelines , which will remain largely the same.

Additional Resources

While the core of our unit is the prompts, mentor texts and contest, we also offer additional resources to inspire and support teachers, including lesson plans and great ideas from our readers around personal narrative writing.

Lesson Plans

“ From ‘Lives’ to ‘Modern Love’: Writing Personal Essays With Help From The New York Times ”

“ I Remember: Teaching About the Role of Memory Across the Curriculum ”

“ Creative State of Mind: Focusing on the Writing Process ”

“ Writing Narratives With ‘Tiny Love Stories’ ”

“ Telling Short, Memorable Stories With Metropolitan Diary ”

Reader Ideas

“ Flipping the Script on the College Essay With Help From The New York Times ”

“ Teaching Great Writing One Sentence at a Time ”

“ Using the Modern Love Podcast to Teach Narrative Writing ”

“ Fostering Selfhood and Inspiring Student Writers Using ‘Metropolitan Diary’ ”

Teaching Narrative Writing With The New York Times (On-Demand)

Personal Narratives From the Newsroom to the Classroom (On-Demand)

• Varsity Tutors
• K-5 Subjects
• Study Skills
• All AP Subjects
• AP Calculus
• AP Chemistry
• AP Computer Science
• AP Human Geography
• AP Macroeconomics
• AP Microeconomics
• AP Statistics
• AP US History
• AP World History
• All Business
• Business Calculus
• Microsoft Excel
• Supply Chain Management
• All Humanities
• Essay Editing
• All Languages
• Mandarin Chinese
• Portuguese Chinese
• Sign Language
• All Learning Differences
• Learning Disabilities
• Special Education
• College Math
• Common Core Math
• Elementary School Math
• High School Math
• Middle School Math
• Pre-Calculus
• Trigonometry
• All Science
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• All Engineering
• Chemical Engineering
• Civil Engineering
• Computer Science
• Electrical Engineering
• Industrial Engineering
• Materials Science & Engineering
• Mechanical Engineering
• Thermodynamics
• Biostatistics
• College Essays
• High School
• College & Adult
• 1-on-1 Private Tutoring
• Online Tutoring
• Instant Tutoring
• Pricing Info
• All AP Exams
• ACT Tutoring
• ACT Reading
• ACT Science
• ACT Writing
• SAT Tutoring
• SAT Reading
• SAT Writing
• GRE Tutoring
• NCLEX Tutoring
• Real Estate License
• And more...
• StarCourses
• Beginners Coding
• Early Childhood
• For Schools Overview
• High-Dosage Tutoring
• Free 24/7 Tutoring & Classes
• Learning Outcomes
• About The Tutors
• Talk with Our Team
• Reviews & Testimonials
• Press & Media Coverage
• Tutor/Instructor Jobs
• Corporate Solutions
• About Nerdy
• Become a Tutor

• Book Reports
• Children’s Literature
• Interdisciplinary
• Just for Fun
• Literature (Prose)
• Professional Resources
• Reading/Literacy
• Shakespeare
• Study Guides
• Technology Integration
• Young Adult Literature

Middle School Narrative Writing Lesson plans and other teaching resources

| Elementary Narrative Writing | |Middle School Narrative Writing| | High School Narrative Writing |

20 Mystical Bridges That Will Take You To Another World Creative writing prompt: "I walked across the bridge and ..." The photographs of real bridges on this page are astonishingly beautiful. However, the page also carries ads that may not be appropriate for the classroom. Consider copying the photographs into a new file for classroom use.

27 Magical Paths Begging To Be Walked Photographs of beautiful paths all over the world, showing a variety of seasons and geography, just waiting to inspire a poem or serve as the setting for a short story. Note: this page carries ads that may not be appropriate for the classroom. Consider copying the photographs into a new file for classroom use.

500 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing Organized by category.

Constructing Narratives: A Unit Plan for Taking Apart and Reconstructing Stories This lesson is designed as a project-based unit plan that will take students through the narrative process from deconstruction to construction. After initial discussion, students will use an interactive story map to deconstruct a short story. Students will use pictures to put together a PowerPoint-based storyboard that other students will use to construct a story. This unit is designed for grades 6-8.

From Object to Story: Writing a Historical Narrative Featuring an Artifact from One's Family History Students share observations about the history of familial artifacts. They then research the history and cultural significance of selected objects to prepare their own historical narratives. Includes short reading as prewriting activity. Designed for grades 7-12.

Hands, Hands, Hands - Writing a Narrative Essay from the Perspective of a Particular Hand The teacher will show pictures of six hands to students (pictures included with other handouts). After a brainstorming session, students will choose one hand that illustrates a particular story from their life. Then students will write a two page narrative essay about this story. These stories will be posted on a class blog to allow for feedback and discussion from classmates. Designed for grades 7-10.

In Search Of Wisdom: An Interview With An Elder Students develop interview questions, interview someone aged 60 or older, and write a narrative using that person's voice. Designed for grades 6-12.

Incorporating Flashbacks in Narrative Text — The Sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis Students watch a 2:25 video segment that shows an interview with one of the survivors of the U.S.S. Indianapolis who recalls the sinking of the ship and his survival. Students then create an original narrative that utilizes flashback to tell the survivor's story. This lesson is designed for grades 6-12 and includes links to the downloadable video and all support materials.

Little Red Riding Hood Little Red Riding Hood is now part of an elite group of fairy tale crime scene investigators. You remember Humpty Dumpty? He didn't fall. He was pushed. Or so it seemed at first. This idea will work on multiple grade levels.

Meet Comic Book Artist Phil Jimenez This video (4:34) presents writer and comic book artist Phil Jimenez, who has worked for DC and Marvel Comics. Jimenez describes his early inspiration, gives tips for good storytelling, and discusses the unique way comics approach sequential narrative. Links at the site include a student assignment handout to review Jimenez's advice, an assignment on making a visual story about an "everyday adventure," and a teacher handout for reflection prompts and discussion questions about visual storytelling that focus on Common Core State Standards for Writing: Text Types and Purposes, for students in grades 6, 7, and 8.

Memory Preservation--One Relative at a Time After organizing and conducting an interview of a grandparent/senior citizen, students create a slideshow presentation using the information and memorabilia collected at the interview. This lesson plan includes rubric and model. It is designed for 8th grade.

Narrative, Argumentative and Informative Writing About Baseball Students compose a one- or two-paragraph scene in which a valuable signed baseball is destroyed. The narrative task is the first of four prompts here. Common Core Standards indicated. Don't miss the extension activity, a video of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" Grades 6-12.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words Students are given a picture that tells a story. They brainstorm words and ideas, then write a story based on what they see. This lesson is designed for grades 6-8.

Prewriting Exercises for Personal Narratives Ten activities for personal narrative writing, grades 7-12.

Using Personal Photographs to Spark Narrative Writing The lesson plan asks students to bring in a photograph that has special meaning for them and to write about it. This will work on multiple grade levels.

7 Great Narrative Lesson Plans Students and Teachers Love

How to Master Narrative Writing in a Single Week

Mastering narrative writing in one week is a big ask. A very BIG ask! But you can teach the core elements of how to craft a well-told tale in this tight timeframe. Mastery will come through diligent practice on the part of the student and thoughtful feedback on the teacher’s part.

How do you teach students narratives?

In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can take your students from zero to hero, in narrative writing terms, in just one lesson per day during the school week and a little extra effort over the weekend.

 Come the following Monday morning, and your desk should be positively heaving under the weight of your students’ freshly composed masterpieces.

 Though we’re in the game of narrative fiction here, let’s try to bring our aspirations into the realm of the possible. We won’t get a novel out of our students in a mere seven days, not without working their fingers and to the bone. However, the short story format will perfectly serve our ambitions.

 So, let’s get started by exploring these five narrative lesson plans – By Zeus’s breath! We’ve still set ourselves a task of Herculean proportions!

THE STORY TELLERS BUNDLE OF TEACHING RESOURCES

A MASSIVE COLLECTION of resources for narratives and story writing in the classroom covering all elements of crafting amazing stories. MONTHS WORTH OF WRITING LESSONS AND RESOURCES, including:

Lesson 1: Generate One Good Story Idea

 There’s a lot of ground to cover, so you’ll need to get your students off to an energetic start if they’re to reach the finish line of a completed story by the end of the week.

 They’ll need to come up with an idea for a story so engaging that they’ll be chomping at the bit to get their pens galloping over the page.

 Try one of these two activities to kickstart your students’ creativity:

• Spin Story Gold from Your Spam

Open up your email and go into your Spam folder. This is a repository of some of the highest-flying fiction in the modern age. It’s peopled with fanciful characters from far-flung lands such as generous princes, dying businessmen searching for heirs, devious diplomats, not to mention desperate widows.

Cut and paste a few of these that are student-suitable, print them, and distribute the results to your class.

If your students can’t make a story from this raw material, you may already have a lost cause on your hands!

• What Ever Happened to So-and-So?

We’ve all had friends and acquaintances we’ve lost touch with over the years. This is true of our students too – young as they are!

Ask your students to think of someone they used to know. Maybe a classmate from kindergarten who went on to a different school, or a neighbor who moved to another city. Anyone they used to know, but since they have since lost contact with will do.

Now, ask them to imagine what happened to this person. What twists and turns have their life taken since you last saw them? Have they fallen into a life of crime or been abducted by aliens? Maybe they moved to a distant, exotic country and have started life anew. Encourage your students to let their imaginations run wild!

And, needless to say, have your students change their names to protect the innocent!

Once the students have come up with their rough story idea , it’s time to nail down some things in more detail and decide on a few crucial elements of their story.

Students must decide who the characters in their story are and what point of view they will tell the story. Will it be told from the first person POV, from the main character’s perspective, or from the omniscient third-person viewpoint? Can students sketch quick character bios to help them later in writing?

How about the setting? Where does the action take place? Will the story be static, or will locations change throughout the story?

Decisions, decisions!

The more questions students generate and answer, the easier tomorrow will be.

Failing all of that, if you need some creative juice, be sure to check out our writing prompts here .

STORY ELEMENTS FOR KIDS TUTORIAL VIDEO

Lesson 2: Outline

Day 2, and it’s time for students to outline their story. You can help this process significantly by giving your students a clear structure to follow. Graphic organizers offer an efficient way to lay things out easily to follow manner, helping students get their story written in an organized fashion.

But, whether they use graphic organizers or sketch their outline by hand, their story outline should contain the following elements (or similar variations):

●      Exposition – include characters & setting details from yesterday.

●      Conflict – this will usually emerge from the initial story idea.

●      Rising Action – a related series of events that escalates the story’s drama

●      Climax – the dramatic highpoint where the conflict comes to a head

●      Falling Action – the dramatic tension of the story decreases, and things move toward the conclusion.

●      Resolution – loose ends are tied up, and the story draws to a close.

Sometimes it can be beneficial to allow students to form small discussion groups to offer each other feedback and constructive criticism on their ideas.

Remind students that the more detail they go into in their outlines, the easier writing their stories will be.

Lesson: 3: Write the First Act

By now, your students have laid all the necessary groundwork, and the writing begins in earnest.

From our early school days, everyone knows that every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. This is the basic three-act story structure, a structure that is ideal for your students to follow when writing their short stories .

The purpose of today’s lesson will be for your students to complete the first act of their story. A well-written first act will provide great momentum to help the students through the remaining two acts.

In the first act, students should aim to:

●      Introduce the important characters

●      Establish the setting and tone of their story

●      Reveal the story’s central conflict

●      Begin the process of ramping up the drama through the rising action.

If the purpose of the first act is to grab the reader’s attention so that they simply have to read to the end, then your students will need to employ a hook right from the first scene of their tale.

The purpose of this hook is to intrigue the reader and entice them to continue reading. But, not only does the hook need to gain the reader’s interest, it needs to serve the needs of the plot too.

A well-used hook should:

●      Introduce the main character

●      Give an insight into that character’s daily life

●      Show them dealing with some problem or conflict to reveal their character

Showing the main character in action dealing with a problem or conflict begins the story’s movement forward – even if the problem is minor.

Moving on from the hook, your students must work to keep the reader engaged throughout the story. There are two main ways to do this, either make the characters interesting or make the events compelling.

And, of course, there is a third option  – do both!

The Inciting Incident

The inciting incident is the event that sets the ball rolling in terms of the story’s action. Often, this is when something happens to flip the main character’s world upside-down or begin a process that causes the pattern of their daily life to be altered significantly, often forever.

Here are two common options to help students create an inciting incident:

●      The Deliberate Choice – Here, the main character makes a decision or a choice that sets all in motion the rest of the events of the story.

●      The Coincidence – The merging of time, place, and characters. Think ‘right person in the right place at the right time.’ You could, of course, substitute ‘wrong’ for ‘right’ here!

From here on out, a sequence of events unfolds, leading us into and through Act 2…

Lesson 4: Write Right to the End

By finishing the first act of their story, your students have pushed the ball to the top of the hill. All that remains is to tip it over the other side and let it roll all the way to the end.

Act 2 will see the dramatic tension build over a series of cause-and-effect events. This is very important for students to grasp. While writing about fictional characters in a fictional world, their stories must still contain a sense of logical consistency or they will frustrate their readers.

The seeds of these events should have been planted in Act 1, whether in the central external conflict or within the characters themselves.

The tension of the plot should build toward the story’s climactic scene in the third act.

Usually, the climax will see the two opposing sides of the conflict come together in some final way. This is where the main character succeeds in their goal or fails. It is where we witness them pushed to their limits.

This is the point all previous events have been working towards. In the aftermath of the climactic scene, the story draws to a close. Loose ends are tied up as the story reaches the resolution stage.

In the resolution, your students should address (usually briefly) the consequences of the events of the story. In a short story such as you will have your students write, the resolution will usually take place over a single scene.

In character-focused stories, the resolution can usually be summed up in a single question: How has the main character changed?  

A short story doesn’t usually have much of a build-up. It will usually start at the last possible moment of the action that will still allow the reader to make sense of what happens.

Likewise, the ending of the story should be tight and lean. The writer shouldn’t hang about, but should still leave the reader with a sense of continuation. That is, the reader should be left with the feeling that life will go in in this fictional world long after they have put the book (or pages!) down.

L esson 5: Edit

You might be beautiful. But, if you don’t brush your teeth occasionally, give your hair the odd brush, and put on some fresh clothes a few times a week, you’ll always be a bit haggard.

Stories are the same. They need tidying up. A little TLC before they make a guest appearance on The Homework Show .

Editing is where this TLC takes place.

Often, it’s difficult for students to gain enough perspective on their story to edit it effectively. It can be good practice to assign students an editing partner, where each student can provide feedback and suggestions to the other.

In this first edit, the main thing students should look out for is the story’s structure. Is it all of a whole? That is, does the story move through the story arc as outlined on the first and second days?

Some other things to watch out for include:

●      Is there a plausibility to the story? This is necessary even in the most fantastical of tales. Even if the events described are impossible, they must ‘ring’ true.

●      Are all the major narrative elements there? Are the characters drawn convincingly? Is there a hook, an inciting incident, a climax, a resolution, etc?

If these larger structural elements are all there, then students check the writing for clarity and revise where necessary.

Editing should be a merciless process; that’s why writers so often talk about ‘killing their babies’ when they discuss editing.

The golden rule of editing narrative writing is, if it doesn’t serve the story, then out it goes!

They can also check for the dreaded incidences of telling instead of showing. For example, characters should reveal themselves through their words and actions, rather than long, boring paragraph upon paragraph of exposition.

Students should make extensive notes for one another if they’re working with partners.

If they are doing their own editing, they can help to gain perspective on their work by reading it out loud.

Now, with notes gripped firmly in ink-stained hands it’s almost time for that final draft.

But first, a Day 6 interlude.

Lesson 6: Let That Potboiler Simmer!

Good writing is a slow-cooked stew of creativity and technical ability. It needs a full day for all the ingredients to steep in their own juices. And that’s what Day 6 is for – a much-needed respite from feverous scribbling.

Allowing the writing to rest for a day does two important things.

Firstly, it allows the student to replenish their energies in readiness for writing the final draft.

It also, more importantly, gives the students a little time to gain some perspective on their stories.

The mind works in unfathomable ways. Sometimes problems that arise in the writing of stories, and other creative text types , get solved by the subconscious while we sleep.

Creativity doesn’t answer to the blare of the factory horn. Students should give their imaginations some time to frolic and cavort.

A COMPLETE UNIT ON TEACHING NARRATIVE WRITING

Teach your students to become skilled story writers with this HUGE   NARRATIVE & CREATIVE STORY WRITING UNIT . Offering a  COMPLETE SOLUTION  to teaching students how to craft  CREATIVE CHARACTERS, SUPERB SETTINGS, and PERFECT PLOTS .

Over 192 PAGES of materials, including:

Lesson 7: The Final Draft

Day 7! Where does the time go?

It’s time for your students to uncurl Day 5’s hurriedly scribbled notes and get working on that final draft.

Students should work through the suggestions, accepting and rejecting as they see fit. While this is predominantly a functional process, there is room for creativity in this problem-solving work.

This is the final run-through. So anything that doesn’t work should be put up against the wall and…well, you get the picture.

Once the story is in fine fettle structurally speaking, it’s time for a final proofread. Punctuation and spelling must be checked and corrected. All t ’s crossed and every I dotted.

With a final read-through, preferably aloud, each student should ceremoniously fold their masterpiece in quarters with great care and prepare to submit their work to the judgement of the Mighty Oracle of All That Is Educational at daybreak the following morn.

Failing that, they could just give it to their teacher in the morning!

There we have it, a rapid race through the twists and turns of mastering the narrative writing form. Just make sure you have set aside plenty of time to read a couple of dozen short stories come Monday night!

Narrative Essay Lesson Plans: Tips for Planning

• Categories : English lesson plans for middle school
• Tags : Teaching middle school grades 6 8

Narrative Essay Writing

If you’ve ever told your students to write a narrative essay and left them to their own devices, you probably received lots of stories that started with “once upon a time,” ended with “happily ever after,” and had very little happen in between.

Most students don’t intend to write boring stories, they just hear the word “story,” think, “Easy!” and proceed from there. However, there is a way to fix this and it’s pretty simple. Like anything else you want your students to learn in the classroom, you must teach your students how to write a narrative essay.

Explain the Purpose of a Narrative Essay

Don’t just say the purpose is to tell a story. The purpose of a narrative essay is to move an event through time.

Choose One Event

If a student chooses to write about their family vacation to Disney World, tell them to pick their one favorite moment during the trip. Many times students will want to describe an entire day, starting with what they ate for breakfast and ending with dinner that evening. When teaching them how to write a narrative essay, make sure they know their story should have a clear beginning, middle, and end.

As with any other writing assignment, students should have a plan for how to write their narrative essay. Since they are moving an event through time, they need to figure out what happens when and they should complete a pre-write to do this successfully.

Beginning, Middle, and End

Stories should have a beginning, middle, and end. Students should determine how the story begins, what happens in the middle (where the bulk of the action will take place) and how the story ends.

How to Move an Event Through Time

One way to move an event through time is by choosing words that reflect this movement. Some words that show movement through time are meanwhile, before, after, during, and suddenly. There are many more. Students should choose the ones that make the most sense for their story.

Rising Action & Big Moment

The story should have a big moment, or climax, and it should have events leading up to that big moment. Students frequently make the mistake of rushing through this integral part of the story. They should do just the opposite. This part needs to be slowed down as much as possible in order to build suspense.

Students slow down their big moments by using sensory detail to describe what is happening. If they have a hard time slowing down their big moment, you can tell them their story must contain at least “X” number of sentences in their rising action and big moment. You would only do this if students continually use only one or two sentences in their big moments and you would stop this requirement as soon as students became successful with the concept.

Stories need endings. Students should resolve their endings and wrap up any loose ends. There is no need to leave their readers wondering what happens next.

Use Dialogue

Students should feel free to use dialogue in their stories. Done correctly; dialogue can really bump their stories up to the next level.

No Need to Be 100% Accurate

Many times students base narrative essays on real life events. If they do so, there is no reason they have to tell the story exactly like it happened. This is a time when they not only can , but should, embellish the facts in order to make their stories more interesting.

As always, the more you model what you expect from your students, the more successful they will be. Keep this in mind as you are teaching them how to write a narrative essay and you will be wonderfully surprised at the entertaining stories your students create.

• Teaching experience.

• About Michelle Waters
• Curriculum Vitae
• Tools I Use
• Podcast Episodes
• How To Be Our Podcast Guest
• Member Login
• Member Helpdesk
• Support Portal
• Resource Partners
• Writing Partners
• Certificate Verification
• How To Contribute

by Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.  

A Plethora Of Writing Examples For Middle School (& High School)

October 14, 2014 in  Pedagogy

When I started my first job as a professional newspaper reporter (This job also served as an internship during my junior year in college — I just didn’t leave for about 6 years.), I quickly realized that all my experience, and all my years of journalism education had not been enough to help me write stories about drug busts, fatal car accidents and tornadoes. All the theoretical work I’d done, and all of the nifty little scholastic and collegiate stories I had done, did not prepare me for real world writing.

At that point, I had to find a solution quickly. After all, I had a deadline to meet, and it was only a few hours away.

One of my colleagues, who also served as a mentor, had the solution. She introduced me to the newspaper’s “morgue.” This was a room filled with filing cabinets in which we kept old — dead — stories arranged by reporter. Whenever I wasn’t’ sure how to write a story, all I had to do was check the morgue for similar stories. If I needed to write a story about a local drug bust, for example, I’d find another story on a similar incident, study its structure, and mentally create a formula in which to plugin the information I’d gathered.

Once I’d gained more experience, and had internalized the formula for that particular type of story, I felt free to branch out as the situation — and my training — warranted.

I do the same thing when I want to write a type of letter, brochure, or report that I’ve never written before.

This is what writing looks like in the real world.

Of course, if you’re a new teacher like me, there is one problem with providing mentor texts to my students: I have a dearth of middle school level writing sitting around in my file cabinets.

Fortunately, the Internet is full of sources, so I scoured the bowels of Google to find examples. I know how busy you are, so I’m sharing.

Expository writing examples for middle school

Below are several sources of expository writing samples for middle school students.

• The Write Source Expository Writing Samples
• Holt, Rinehart, Winston Expository Essay Models

Finally, here is an article in the New York Times that will help you teach your students  real-world expository writing skills .

Descriptive writing examples for middle school

• Descriptive Writing Samples from Novels
• Milwaukee Public Schools Descriptive Essay Samples (p. 137)
• Holt, Rinehart, Winston Descriptive Essay Models

Narrative writing examples for middle school

• Writing Samples by Steve Peha (PDF)
• The Write Source Narrative Writing Samples
• Oregon Department of Education Scored Writing Samples (Ideas and Organization)
• Oregon Department of Education Scored Writing Samples (Sentence Fluency and Conventions)
• Oregon Department of Education Scored Writing Samples (Voice and Word Choice)
• Oregon Department of Education High School Scored Narrative and Argumentative Writing Samples
• Holt, Rinehart, Winston Narrative Essay Models

Argumentative/persuasive writing examples for middle school

• The Write Source Persuasive Writing Samples
• Holt, Rinehart, Winston Persuasive Essay Models

Reflective writing examples for middle school

• Reflective essay examples from Lake Washington Girls Middle School

If you know of any other online writing example sources, please feel free to share them in the comments below.

Related topics: Argumentative Writing , Informative Writing , Mentor Texts , Narrative Writing

About the author 

Michelle Boyd Waters, M.Ed.

I am a secondary English Language Arts teacher, a University of Oklahoma student working on my doctorate in Instructional Leadership and Academic Curriculum with an concentration in English Education and co-Editor of the Oklahoma English Journal. I am constantly seeking ways to amplify students' voices and choices.

This is very, very helpful. Thank you for sharing!

As a new middle school teacher (coming from elementary) this was very helpful and encouraging.

Thank you very much for letting me know. I’m glad that I was able to help you!

Thank you! I’m glad I can help.

Your welcome

This is super helpful. Thank you!

These links are a fantastic help. Thank you!

This helped me BUNCHES! Thanks so much!

thanks so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! XD

These links are now dead 🙁

Thank you for notifying me! I have updated the post to include new (live!) links. Some of them are geared towards high school, but I think we can still use them as exemplars of what we want our students to aim for.

Comments are closed.

• Character Education
• Classroom Management
• Cultural Responsive
• Differentiation
• Distance Learning
• Explicit Teaching
• Figurative Language
• Interactive Notebooks
• Mentor Text
• Monthly/Seasonal
• Organization
• Social Emotional Learning
• Social Studies
• Step-by-Step Instruction
• Teaching Tips
• Testing and Review
• Freebie Vault Registration
• Login Freebie Album
• Lost Password Freebie Album
• FREE Rockstar Community
• In the News
• Writing Resources
• Reading Resources
• Social Studies Resources
• Interactive Writing Notebooks
• Interactive Reading Notebooks
• Teacher Finds
• Follow Amazon Teacher Finds on Instagram
• Rockstar Writers® Members Portal Login
• FREE MASTERCLASS: Turn Reluctant Writers into Rockstar Writers®
• Enroll in Rockstar Writers®

Students are finished with their rough drafts and what do they want to do? Immediately write a final copy. NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! This post will provide ideas for your writer’s workshop when teaching your students how to REVISE a narrrative essay. It is also a part of a series of writing mini lessons that scaffold through the writing process ideal for any writing curriculum.

I call Step 3 of the writing process DARE to REVISE.  I DARE YOU!!!!!!!  Mention a few of your students’ favorite authors and explain how they NEVER take a rough draft and try to publish it right away. They ALWAYS revise!  

Share an anchor chart or write the following on the board.  Explain to your students that you are DARING them to make their papers better. Be  excited  and stress the importance of revising their writing! They will want to imitate your enthusiasm! Don’t get confused with editing mechanics like capitalization, usage, punctuation and spelling. That will come later. This step is making the content of writing better! See the transformation of writing into an amazing piece of art!

D-  Delete unnecessary information A-  Add more important detail and transition words. R-  Rearrange text to be logical and effective. E-  Exchange words for clearer and stronger ones.

2. MENTOR TEXT

Share a  mentor text  for revising.  One suggestion is  Hooray for Diffendoofer Day  by Jack Pretlutsky and Dr. Seuss.  If you own my interactive writing notebooks , there is a mentor text selection for each grade level.  In this particular book, there is an appendix that shows how famous authors find the need to revise! Remind your students that even the best authors revise, edit, revise, edit, over and over before they even think about the publishing stage. Roald Dahl’s website is an amazing resource to share with your students. There is an interview with him where he talks about the importance of revising!

Model how to revise! When you wrote your rough draft with the class, did you make mistakes to correct for this step?  If not, no worries!  Take a section of the rough draft and make mistakes on it.  Show students where they can make changes.

4. TAKE NOTES

Whether you have your students create  interactive notebooks  or simply take notes in a notebook, have them add the acronym D.A.R.E.  They can refer back to their notetaking next time they have to revise an essay!

5. PRACTICE

Provide students with a paragraph with mistakes that could be revised.  Have them work in partners or groups to find ways for each letter of DARE.  Allow them to use a thesaurus, colored pens, and notes, and other student resources for this activity.

Students will need :

• A rough draft essay
• Colored pens or pencils
• Student Resources
• Optional- Recorder

I used to call this step READ to revise because ultimately you want them reading and listening to their own writing. Read the rough draft out loud!  DARE seemed more motivational so I changed it. When students read their own papers out loud, they can HEAR where they are making errors.  I love it when a student is reading a writing piece to me out loud and says, “I didn’t mean to say that!”  I reply, “This is exactly why we are revising! Think like an author!”  It reinforces what I’ve been telling them all along!  I like to give them options. They can read it to a peer or record it on a device where they can play it back to LISTEN for places to revise.  Challenge your students to be DARE detectives. Find places to revise!  Below you will see students using their IPADs to record themselves reading.

Sharing is always a valuable activity.  Students learn so much from each other!  Have your students share their revisions!  Tell them to explain why they chose to revise those areas.

I hope this helps in your writing lessons!  The next several mini lessons will break down each of the acronyms for revising!

Check out my FREE writing masterclass! CLICK HERE

LAST LESSON:   WRITING MINI LESSON #22- WRITING A ROUGH DRAFT

NEXT LESSON:   WRITING MINI LESSON #24- REVISING A NARRATIVE ESSAY- DELETE!

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL LIST OF WRITING MINI LESSONS

This lesson is also included in the STEP-BY-STEP WRITING ® Programwith mini-lessons designed to scaffold through the writing process. Writing units included are sentence structure, paragraph writing, narrative writing, opinion writing, and informative writing. See what is included in the image below and click on it to learn more about them! You will turn your reluctant writers into ROCKSTAR WRITERS ™! 

“Holy Guacamole!!! This is by far the BEST WRITING RESOURCE I have every purchased! Teaching writing is hard, and teaching writing to little people is even harder, but this is so fun and broken down into manageable steps without making you pull your hair out. THANK YOU!!!” -Nadia

Writing Mini Lesson #22- Writing a Rough Draft for a Narrative Essay

Effective ways to teach greek and latin roots and vocabulary.

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• How to write a narrative essay | Example & tips

How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips

Published on July 24, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A narrative essay tells a story. In most cases, this is a story about a personal experience you had. This type of essay , along with the descriptive essay , allows you to get personal and creative, unlike most academic writing .

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

What is a narrative essay for, choosing a topic, interactive example of a narrative essay, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about narrative essays.

When assigned a narrative essay, you might find yourself wondering: Why does my teacher want to hear this story? Topics for narrative essays can range from the important to the trivial. Usually the point is not so much the story itself, but the way you tell it.

A narrative essay is a way of testing your ability to tell a story in a clear and interesting way. You’re expected to think about where your story begins and ends, and how to convey it with eye-catching language and a satisfying pace.

These skills are quite different from those needed for formal academic writing. For instance, in a narrative essay the use of the first person (“I”) is encouraged, as is the use of figurative language, dialogue, and suspense.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

Narrative essay assignments vary widely in the amount of direction you’re given about your topic. You may be assigned quite a specific topic or choice of topics to work with.

• Write a story about your first day of school.
• Write a story about your favorite holiday destination.

You may also be given prompts that leave you a much wider choice of topic.

• Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself.
• Write about an achievement you are proud of. What did you accomplish, and how?

In these cases, you might have to think harder to decide what story you want to tell. The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to talk about a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

For example, a trip where everything went according to plan makes for a less interesting story than one where something unexpected happened that you then had to respond to. Choose an experience that might surprise the reader or teach them something.

Narrative essays in college applications

When applying for college , you might be asked to write a narrative essay that expresses something about your personal qualities.

For example, this application prompt from Common App requires you to respond with a narrative essay.

In this context, choose a story that is not only interesting but also expresses the qualities the prompt is looking for—here, resilience and the ability to learn from failure—and frame the story in a way that emphasizes these qualities.

An example of a short narrative essay, responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” is shown below.

Hover over different parts of the text to see how the structure works.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

• Ad hominem fallacy
• Post hoc fallacy
• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

College essays

• Choosing Essay Topic
• Write a College Essay
• Write a Diversity Essay
• College Essay Format & Structure
• Comparing and Contrasting in an Essay

 (AI) Tools

• Grammar Checker
• Paraphrasing Tool
• Text Summarizer
• AI Detector
• Plagiarism Checker
• Citation Generator

If you’re not given much guidance on what your narrative essay should be about, consider the context and scope of the assignment. What kind of story is relevant, interesting, and possible to tell within the word count?

The best kind of story for a narrative essay is one you can use to reflect on a particular theme or lesson, or that takes a surprising turn somewhere along the way.

Don’t worry too much if your topic seems unoriginal. The point of a narrative essay is how you tell the story and the point you make with it, not the subject of the story itself.

Narrative essays are usually assigned as writing exercises at high school or in university composition classes. They may also form part of a university application.

When you are prompted to tell a story about your own life or experiences, a narrative essay is usually the right response.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. (2023, July 23). How to Write a Narrative Essay | Example & Tips. Scribbr. Retrieved April 16, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/academic-essay/narrative-essay/

Is this article helpful?

Jack Caulfield

Other students also liked, how to write an expository essay, how to write a descriptive essay | example & tips, how to write your personal statement | strategies & examples, what is your plagiarism score.

Bell Ringers

Middle school mentor sentences narrative essay dialogue freebie.

We have been working on writing our narrative essays in my seventh and eighth grade middle school ELA classes, and in the process, I have created some new lessons and resources specifically to help students use dialogue correctly and effectively. 

I used to get blue in the face over teaching my middle school students how to correctly use and format dialogue. I felt like I could get them to use it either effectively or correctly, but not always both. Since then, I created a resource that would teach students how to do both. 

I wanted to make sure that the students formed a conceptual understanding of all of our narrative dialogue concepts.

When I created this lesson, I knew that using mentor sentences from our realistic fiction narrative novels would be perfect.

I was already reading these books aloud with my students, so I used them for all the examples. 

NARRATIVE DIALOGUE MENTOR TEXT EXAMPLES

This freebie lesson is different than my other mentor sentence lessons. I needed to show my sixth, seventh, and eighth graders how to correctly format dialogue when we were writing and typing our narrative essays.

The focus wasn’t on labeling the parts of speech. It was more important that we notice how to format when multiple people were talking back and forth. This required us looking at multiple sentences, specifically sentences that had a variety of formatting for dialogue in terms of punctuation and capitalization.

We simply copied the sentences straight from the books into our notebook. Then as a class we came up with the rules for narrative essay dialogue, based on what we noticed.

When I made this when I only taught seventh and eighth grade so my examples only covered that, but I have since added an example for sixth grade with the mentor text Ghost by Jason Reynolds. 

NARRATIVE DIALOGUE RULES AND STRATEGIES

I added the rules in my notebook and then eventually made a chart paper example with the narrative essay dialogue rules (also included).

There is an example for Ghost, Freak the Mighty and an example for The Outsiders , because I read those two books with 6th, 7th, and 8th respectively.

The rules we came up with for dialogue are as follows:

• ONE: You must go to a new paragraph and indent each time a new person talks.
• TWO: Quotation marks only go around what the character is literally saying.
• THREE : Always capitalize the first word inside the quotations.
• FOUR: Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks.
• FIVE: When there are quotation marks, you most likely need a comma somewhere (either at the end of the words in quotations or before when the speaker is being introduced: He said, … “

I also made a dialogue rules interactive notebook lesson that we used to create and write our class created rules. 

I liked how every class had a little bit different rules. It showed that they were really conceptualizing their own knowledge about dialogue.

They genuinely grew so much as writers in their essays because of this lesson. I still had to support some students, but it seriously saved my sanity to not have to show them over and over again. 

NARRATIVE ESSAY WRITING UNIT

This lesson was made to accompany my middle school narrative essay unit. Because I taught sixth, seventh, and eighth grade ELA, all my units are differentiated by middle school grade level. I needed to be able to use the same unit all three years, but not bore them to death. 

This narrative writing unit has undergone huge improvements since it’s initial conception about five years ago. It went from a 60-70 page units to 150+ pages and has basically doubled in size. 

Again, this unit is perfect if you teach multiple grades because you can teach it 2-3 years in row. 

Want ALL the narrative essay freebies? Get the narrative reference booklet and the free narrative dialogue lesson plan, interactive notebook lesson, and more sent straight to your inbox! 

• Read more about: Middle School Grammar , Middle School Writing

You might also like...

Short Story Mentor Texts to Teach Narrative Writing Elements

Using Mentor Texts for Narrative Writing in Middle School ELA

Mentor Texts: When and How To Use Them in Your ELA Lessons

Get your free middle school ela pacing guides with completed scopes and sequences for the school year..

My ELA scope and sequence guides break down every single middle school ELA standard and concept for reading, writing, and language in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. Use the guides and resources exactly as is or as inspiration for you own!

Meet Martina

I’m a Middle School ELA teacher committed to helping you improve your teaching & implement systems that help you get everything done during the school day!

Let's Connect

Member login.

PRIVACY POLICY 

 TERMS OF USE

WEBSITE DISCLAIMERS

MEMBERSHIP AGREEEMENT

© The Hungry Teacher • Website by KristenDoyle.co • Contact Martina

Middle School Narrative Essays Writing Unit Activities 6th 7th 8th Grade Essays

What educators are saying

Also included in.

Description

This narrative writing unit includes three weeks of middle school narrative essay writing lesson plans for teaching your sixth, seventh, and eighth grade ELA students how to write narrative essays. The mentor texts Ghost, Freak the Mighty, and The Outsiders are used as examples for each lesson.

The lessons teach all the elements of narrative writing through the use of mentor texts you and students will love using, leading them to write their narratives.

Each lesson is broken down step-by-step for teachers , and each example is broken down with explanations for students.

All the lessons include students' work examples and chart papers for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. If you teach all three grades, the units have been differentiated, so you could teach this all three years.

Our examples are based on writing from a different character's point of view from Ghost or Freak the Mighty or continuing the narrative from The Outsiders, but all serve as good examples for any texts you or your students use. If nothing else, the examples from this writing unit serve as their mentor texts for you and your students to use.

There are 13 lesson plans and 15 sessions of narrative writing included in this resource:

• Session 1: Elements of Narrative Essays Part one
• Session 2: Elements of Narrative Essays Part Two
• Session 3: Narrative Plot Diagrams
• Session 4: Using Sensory Details
• Session 5: Using Dialogue Correctly
• Session 6: Using Dialogue Effectively
• Session 7: Ways to Start a Narrative, Writing Rough Drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 8: Using Narrative Transitions, Writing Rough Drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 9: Pacing Narrative Writing, Writing Rough Drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 10: Ways to End a Narrative, Writing Rough Drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 11: Consistent Verb Tenses, Peer Editing, Writing Conferences
• Session 12: Editing vs. Revising Rough drafts, Writing Conferences
• Session 13-15: Publishing final drafts, Writing Conferences

Other Resources Included:

• Unique examples and notes using different mentor texts for each grade level: Sixth Grade: Ghost by Jason Reynolds; Seventh Grade: Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick; Eighth Grade: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
• Interactive Notebook Lesson for Narrative Elements and Dialogue
• Lesson Plan Slides to Teach Each Concept
• Mentor Texts Lesson, Examples, and Assessment for Dialogue in Narratives
• Editable peer editing checklist and forms
• Editable Narrative Writing Rubrics and Checklists
• Individual student writing conference forms and examples
• Examples of chart papers for every lesson

Ten Different Narrative Reference pages for students to use while writing or to make into a narrative reference booklet:

• Six elements of quality narrative essays
• Developing narrative plots
• Examples of sensory details in narrative mentor texts
• How and why to use dialogue in narrative essays
• Ways to start a narrative
• When to use transitions and lists of transition words or phrases
• Pacing narrative stories
• Ways to end a narrative
• Editing vs. Revising
• MLA Formatting of Essays

Your students will write narratives that you will LOVE reading year after year.

Prep is quick and easy... Just print the student pages, gather the materials listed, display my examples, teach the lesson, and you're ready for middle schoolers who can critically read and annotate speeches and essays and then write true rhetorical analysis responses and essays.

TEACHERS LIKE YOU SAID…

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Samantha S. says, "This resource has made teaching narrative writing to my 7th graders a breeze! I love how each day is laid out and set up so students learn a little bit about narrative writing and build their own narratives step-by-step. I made a couple of changes to some of the mentor text examples, as I am using this in conjunction with literature circle novels and I wanted it to match what my students are currently reading. Overall, I have felt so organized using this, and most importantly, my students have been engaged! "

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Amy G. says, "SUCH a valuable resource! There's so much here, and it's all appropriate for my state's learning targets. Many of my students wrote really impressive narratives, thanks to the help of this resource!"

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Frances C. says, "I love using this with my 7th and 8th graders. It really helps break it down for the students. I also love the amount of modeling she does for her students."

___________________________________

You may also like…

→ Research Essay Writing Unit for Middle School ELA

→ Argumentative and Research Writing Unit for Middle School ELA

→ Literary Analysis Reading and Essay Writing Unit for Middle School ELA

→ Rhetorical Analysis Reading Essay Writing Unit for Middle School ELA

Copyright © The Hungry Teacher, LLC.

Permission to copy for single classroom use only.

Please purchase additional licenses if you intend to share this product.

Questions & Answers

Martina cahill - the hungry teacher.

• We're hiring
• Help & FAQ
• Privacy policy
• Student privacy
• Terms of service
• Tell us what you think

The Best Narrative Writing Prompts for Middle School

Narrative writing can be super exciting, especially when guided by a super fun prompt!

Prompts are powerful tools for inspiring students to their best writing. They allow you to guide and help young learners stay focused on a specific topic as they engage in the writing process. Furthermore, the sheer simplicity of writing prompts in middle school classrooms, compared to worksheets or handouts , makes them the perfect last-minute addition to any lesson plan.

In this article, we’re giving you a few narrative writing prompts for middle school that students will absolutely love! Before we begin, however, let’s take a quick look at the importance of narrative writing.

The importance of narrative writing

People ask–why do students need to learn narrative writing? For teachers, the answer is simple. Many standardized tests , such as the Louisiana Education Assessment Program (LEAP), require students to demonstrate their ability to analyze and write narratives.

Learning to write narratives helps learners understand narrative structure, which in return, improves their reading comprehension. Thus, a wholistic approach to narrative instruction, which includes both reading and writing, is an effective way to help students place higher on standardized assessments.

Aside from test-related motivations to study narratives, this particular style of writing gives students a creative outlet for expressing themselves. As a matter of fact, narrative writing is often called “creative writing.”

The purpose of a narrative is to tell audiences a story, and students are given countless opportunities to make creative choices when telling stories. Through writing, they learn to develop a unique voice and imbue their work with a distinct, personal touch.

“…students are given countless opportunities to make creative choices when telling stories.”

Example middle school narrative writing prompts

As promised, here are a the best–and only–narrative writing prompts for middle school students you’ll ever need!

• Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live as your favorite animal? What animal would you be? What would you do during a typical day? What challenges might you face? Write a narrative essay about what a day in the life as your favorite animal would be like. Use the questions in the prompt to guide your response.
• Imagine winning the lottery tomorrow. What would you do with the money? Would you spend it? If so, what would you buy? Would you save it? If so, why? Write a narrative essay describing what you would do after winning the lottery. Use the questions in the prompt to guide your response.
• Everyone has fears, and sometimes we have to face them. What is your worst fear? When did the fear begin?  Why does it make you afraid? How could you overcome it? Write a narrative about overcoming your worst fear. Use the questions in the prompt to guide your response.
• At some point, we have all had an opportunity to be strong. What has been your strongest moment? Were you mentally or physically strong? Or both? What did it feel like? Write a narrative essay about a time when you were strong. Use the questions in the prompt to guide your response.
• Imagine you are elected president of the United States. What would you say to the American people during your inauguration speech? How would you run the country? What laws would you pass? What laws would you abolish? Write a narrative essay about what you would do as the president of the United States. Use the questions in the prompt to guide your response.

Rather use narrative writing handouts? Make sure to explore our Resource section for additional teaching tools.

Final words

These narrative writing prompts for middle school students are simple, fun, and effective. Try them out and witness the endless creative stories your students will come up with!

Like and follow Classroom Camp on Facebook for all the latest tips and resources for students, parents, and educators!

Related Posts

Staff Meeting Sign-in Sheet FREE DOWNLOAD

Signing Ceremonies Honor Students Who Want to Be Teachers

• Share article

In schools across the country this spring, high school seniors are being celebrated as they ceremoniously sign declarations of intent. They’re not student-athletes announcing which school they are committing to—they’re future teachers.

Future teacher signing days have become an increasingly popular tactic by school and district leaders to strengthen the teacher pipeline. They’re a chance to position teaching as a career that deserves recognition and applause, and honor the teenagers who are interested in entering the field.

“We think this is as big of a deal as announcing that you’re going to play women’s basketball at [the University of] Iowa, or men’s basketball at the University of North Carolina,” said James Lane, the CEO of PDK International, whose signature program is Educators Rising , which works to create pathways for students who want to be teachers. “It’s just as big of a deal when kids announce that they ... want to become a teacher and give a life of service to children.”

District leaders should be targeting their K-12 students to ensure a sustainable supply of teachers long term, Lane said. After all, past research has found that more than 60 percent of teachers work within 20 miles of where they went to high school.

“School districts spend a lot of money on HR and recruiting,” Lane said. “But their best recruiting tool is actually with the kids in their community and convincing them that education is a great life, and you can make a difference.”

It can be a hard sell. Teaching has a reputation as a low-paid, overworked, and disrespected profession. Research has shown that college undergraduates who are interested in teaching say that they’ve received discouraging messages about the field from people they respect, such as family members, friends, and former teachers, as well as from the media.

But signing days are a chance to flip that narrative. In those ceremonies, students who are interested in teaching are celebrated and encouraged.

“We want people to know that the moment that you make that decision to become a teacher, you’re making a decision to make people’s lives better and our world a better place,” Lane said. “We believe we have a responsibility to let people celebrate the folks that are making those decisions to raise the next generation of students, side by side with parents in our communities.”

For the past few years, Educators Rising has hosted a signing day at its national conference, which brings more than 3,300 students to Washington in the summer. And during Teacher Appreciation Week, which takes place the first full week of May, local chapters host their own signing days with support from the national organization, which provides a toolkit of resources.

This year, the national signing day for Educators Rising chapters is on May 7, although other schools hold their own signing ceremonies at other points throughout the spring.

A positive school affair

Earlier this month, four seniors at Baldwin County High School in Bay Minette, Ala., signed a pledge demonstrating their commitment to be a teacher. It was the school’s second time hosting a signing day event, and everyone was excited.

The art teacher created the students’ nameplates for the ceremony. The media teacher created posters with the future teachers’ names and colleges. The business teacher made the certificates the students signed. The science teacher designed invitations to send to district and state officials.

“It was a school effort,” said Vickie Locke, an English teacher at the school and the lead adviser for the school’s chapter of Future Teachers of Alabama. “We wanted it to look just right.”

Locke encouraged the students to contact the admissions department at their future colleges to get some paraphernalia, like pennants and pompoms, to decorate the signing tables, and to wear their college T-shirts to the ceremony. The future teachers were allowed to invite their close school friends to the ceremony, in addition to their family members.

All those little touches made for a special ceremony for the future teachers, Locke said. They also drew the interest of other students who aren’t in the Future Teachers of Alabama club.

“Some students see this and how we talk it up and how dignified it is and how nice it is—they like that,” Locke said, adding that some have asked how they can join the club next year.

During the ceremony, Locke asked each student the same question: Why do you want to be a teacher?

This year, one student said she feels that she could help some of the students in the area because she relates to some of the challenges they might be facing.

“She just wants to give back to our community in a positive way,” Locke said. “She said, ‘I want to come back to Baldwin County and be a teacher.’ That’s kind of what we hope—that they’ll come back.”

Added Locke, a 28-year teaching veteran: “I need someone to come back and take my place who’s in it for the right reasons.”

‘We want alumni back’

Some districts have added incentives for students to come back and teach in their signing day programs.

At Colquitt County High School in Norman Park, Ga., any senior participating in the signing day is guaranteed a position in the district if they graduate from college with a teaching certificate.

“We are really working hard to grow our own teachers,” said Daniel Chappuis, the school’s principal. “We want alumni back and engaged in the community that they grew up in.”

Last year, 10 students signed pledges to pursue teaching, and Chappuis expects a few more to do so in this year’s ceremony, which will be held next month.

Meanwhile, at Center Grove High School in Greenwood, Ind., students are guaranteed a first-round interview at the district once they graduate college and earn their teaching license. While earning their degrees, they’ve got a spot as a student-teacher in the district.

Building up homegrown talent is one way the district is working to combat the decline in applications for teaching positions, said Krista Nelson, the director of human resources and student services. The high school offers opportunities for students to earn college credit in education courses, as well as a cadet teaching program that lets students work in elementary or middle school classrooms throughout the school year.

Last year, 20 high school seniors committed to the field of education during the school’s inaugural teacher signing day, which drew a crowd of more than 100 people. This year, the district is expecting 30 signees, Nelson said.

“We did it to put a spotlight on those students who have that passion to support others,” she said. “Not only was it kids feeling proud because there was a large group of people cheering them on, ... there were a lot of joyful tears from parents.”

Nelson plans to keep in touch with every student who signs a commitment by sending them letters twice a year to see if there’s anything the district can do to support them. So far, she hasn’t heard that anyone has changed their minds.

Celebrating current teachers, too

School and district leaders say there’s another benefit to future teacher signing day: showing appreciation to the current teachers who inspired students to follow in their footsteps.

For example, the Mansfield, Mass., school district held its first signing event for prospective teachers last year, using resources provided by the state education department. One special touch: The students who were honored at the event invited an educator who inspired them to become a teacher to watch them sign their declaration of intent.

“It’s a win-win: It’s honoring the students who are looking to be teachers, [and] it’s honoring the teachers” who inspired them,” Superintendent Teresa Murphy said. This year’s ceremony will be held next month.

Lane, the CEO of Educators Rising, said he often sees students at signing ceremonies talking about their own teachers and thanking them for inspiring them. It’s a huge source of pride for teachers, he said.

“The signing day isn’t just about the student going into the field,” Lane said. “It’s about everyone who had a role in helping the student get to that point in that decision having that moment of celebration. ...

“It’s a celebration of the community—that we are a place that grows educators. And what better story can we tell from our school environment, that we are convincing our kids that the work we do with them every day is important [enough] that they can make it a part of their lives?”

Sign Up for The Savvy Principal

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In