Narrative Writing: Introduction Educational Resources K12 Learning, Writing, English / Language Arts Lesson Plans, Activities, Experiments, Homeschool Help

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

Do you like stories?
What makes a story interesting instead of boring or meaningless?

Did you know that you have a story or two to tell?

You don't want to be boring or have your audience go, "Huh?"

Here's how to make your story exciting and get your point across!

A narrative is any writing that tells a story.

When you write a narrative essay, your voice sounds natural and personal. Your narrative writing should sound like you're telling a story to a friend.

Your story can be a lesson you have learned, an idea you want to get across, or something you feel emotional about.

Writing about a personal experience is one type of narrative writing. It can be something funny that happened to you or a time when you learned a valuable lesson.

Take out a piece of paper and a pencil.

Write down the steps for writing a personal narrative as you watch the video below.

In the video, Ellie told a humorous story about mashed potato pizza.

She gave you specific instructions for organizing your notes before writing to help your writing flow. She gave five main parts to your essay.

introduction
beginning
middle
end
conclusion

She then suggested that you draw a picture of the events in the beginning, middle, and end sections. Beside each photo, she made short notes of what happened during each section.

She then wrote her introduction to tell you what she planned to explain. In this case, she said her Grandpa once told her that if people laugh at their mistakes, it will cause everyone else to laugh with them.

Then, she used her notes and drawings to tell her story (beginning, middle, and end). She uses dialogue in her essay.

Dialogue refers to the words characters speak to each other in a story. It makes the experience come alive for a reader.

During this section, some of the children were laughing, which embarrassed Ellie because she felt they were laughing at her.

The last paragraph is the conclusion. In the conclusion, you explain the meaning of the story.

She never really believed her Grandpa until she had this experience and could laugh at herself. Once she started laughing, she felt better and realized her friends were laughing with her.

friends hugging and laughing together

This is a perfect way to plan to write a personal narrative essay. Using a personal experience to tell a story is a very effective storytelling technique.

Also, using dialogue and descriptive words enables the person reading the story to imagine a vivid picture of what happened in the story.

Continue to the Got It? section to practice what you have learned.