Unit of Study: Small Moments that Matter – Personal Narrative

Unit of Study: Small Moments that Matter ?

Personal Narrative

1Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District Elementary Language Arts Department, Grades 2, 3, & 4 Updated June 2012 with Crunchtime Strategies for STAAR

Small Moments that Matter ? Personal Narrative TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Purpose of this Document ..................................................................................................................... iv The Role of Read Aloud in the Personal Narrative Genre Study......................................................v Personal Narrative Mentor Texts ...........................................................................................................v Writing Homework ..................................................................................................................................v A Note about Writing Process Boards...................................................................................................v Format of the Lessons ............................................................................................................................ vi The Framework of the Personal Narrative Unit of Study (Phases)................................................ vii A Discussion of the Personal Narrative Genre.................................................................................. vii When a Student Says, "I Have Nothing to Write About" .............................................................. viii Anchor Charts ....................................................................................................................................... viii Lessons Included in the Unit of Study .................................................................................................ix

Minilessons

Setting the Stage: Introduction to Personal Narrative Writing.......................................................... 1 Thinking About the Elements of Narrative Stories ............................................................................. 2 Reading Mentor Texts Through the Eyes of a Writer .........................................................................3 Rereading the Notebook: Exploring the Idea of Small Moment Writing.........................................4 Generating Ideas through the Quicklist ................................................................................................ 5 Weaving Experience and Beliefs Together to Create Thoughtful, Engaging Writing.................... 6 Photographs: The Story Behind the Picture.......................................................................................... 7 Fabric of Depth: Retrieving Memories through Associations............................................................ 8 Reflecting on My Levels of Personal Experience .................................................................................9 Getting Acquainted with Truisms Using Picture Prompts .............................................................. 10 Investigating Text Organizational Structures Found in Narrative Writing .................................. 11 Writing a Kernel Essay with Text Structures...................................................................................... 12 Getting Right to the Story You Have to Tell.......................................................................................13 Telling the Story and Asking the Questions.......................................................................................14 Hooking Readers with Effective Leads ...............................................................................................15

Cy-Fair ISD Curriculum Department DRAFT ? June 2012

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Small Moments that Matter ? Personal Narrative

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Great Beginnings: Draw a Picture........................................................................................................ 16 Reeling Readers in with Satisfying Endings....................................................................................... 17 Getting Our Writing F.I.T...................................................................................................................... 18 Adding Revision "Bling" with Sensory Details ................................................................................. 19 Exploding the Moment .......................................................................................................................... 20 The Golden Line: Crafting Sparkling Sentences ............................................................................... 21 Strengthening Leads and Endings with Truisms .............................................................................. 22 Ba-da-bing Sentences ............................................................................................................................. 23 Introduction to Punctuation Dialogue ................................................................................................ 24 Using an Editing Checklist.................................................................................................................... 25 Publishing Decisions: Preparing the Final Copy for an Audience..................................................26 Celebrate and Reflect on Good Times ................................................................................................. 27

Cy-Fair ISD Curriculum Department DRAFT ? June 2012

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Small Moments that Matter ? Personal Narrative

Writing Unit of Study

PREFACE

PURPOSE OF THIS DOCUMENT The Personal Narrative Unit of Study serves as a resource to help develop students' awareness, understanding, and proficiency in writing about everyday life topics in a highly personal way. This unit of study provides a rich connection between what we read and what we write. The more students read, analyze, and discuss personal narratives before they write them, the better their writing will be. Within this unit, students will learn the unique strategies associated with crafting narrative texts by investigating a variety of exemplars, including teacher models, peer models, and published works. For this reason, teachers will need samples from their own writing notebooks as well as a number of narrative texts, including picture books, to teach this genre study (See Appendices).

The Personal Narrative Unit of Study emphasizes the idea that learning to write is a cumulative process and that any new work that writers do will always stand on the shoulders of previous work. Hence, students will spend time revisiting existing entries in their notebooks as well as spending time developing new strategies for writing. The teacher launches the unit of study by celebrating narrative texts and raising the students' expectations for what it means to write powerful personal narratives. The teacher and students spend time getting better acquainted with personal narrative writing by studying mentor texts. They make notes of things they notice about the ways that the texts are written. They think about the processes that writers use to craft narrative texts. As students begin collecting ideas for their own narrative writing, they are encouraged to draw upon familiar strategies for collecting ideas as well as apply newly acquired strategies that they have learned. After choosing a topic, students will write under the influence of the genre, writing in a way that meaningfully reflects their learning within this genre study. In the end, the students should feel an increased sense of accomplishment and understand that their writing identities are further developed through the stories that they hear and construct.

While this publication is meant to be a resource for teachers that are implementing writing workshop, it can certainly be adapted to meet the unique needs of students from year to year and grade to grade. This document is meant to spark conversations about the order in which minilessons related to the personal narrative genre are presented to students and what those minilessons might look like in the context of the classroom.

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Small Moments that Matter ? Personal Narrative

Writing Unit of Study

THE ROLE OF READ ALOUD IN THE PERSONAL NARRATIVE GENRE STUDY Often, young writers view personal narratives as bed-to-bed stories that begin when the writer awakes and ends when they fall asleep (Serafini, 2006). Students need to hear numerous examples of narratives texts being read aloud in order to become familiar to the nuances and unique characteristics of this genre. When beginning the study of personal narratives, it is important that you select engaging, focused, prototypical examples of first-person narrative texts in order to establish a working definition of the genre. First-person narrative picture books, short stories, and excerpts featuring a slice-of-life story line typically work best when introducing the genre. Ideally, the texts chosen would represent the personal narrative genre; however, when such texts are unavailable, teachers may occasionally choose a fictional story to share with the students, explaining that although the text is really fiction, it is written as a narrative and can therefore demonstrate the narrative craft. Teachers are strongly encouraged to share narrative texts in both reading and writing minilessons to facilitate seamless integration and repeated exposure to the genre.

PERSONAL NARRATIVE MENTOR TEXTS An electronic copy of a mentor text for each grade level has been provided as a resource for teachers to use throughout the unit of study. Teachers may use texts featured in previous grade levels, but they are asked to reserve the mentor texts for the grade levels designated below.

Grade 2 ? "Eating the World" by Ralph Fletch Grade 3 ? "Car Trip" by Jon Scieszka Grade 4 ? "Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros

WRITING HOMEWORK Several mini-lessons in this unit refer to writing homework and suggest that students collect ideas in their writing notebook. Homework policies should be discussed at the campus and agreed upon during team planning sessions. Homework policies should be consistent with those established during the first six-weeks.

A NOTE ABOUT WRITING PROCESS BOARDS Some teachers opt to have a writing process board in their classroom, such as the one depicted on page 78 of Guiding Readers & Writers by Fountas & Pinnell. Please note that during this unit of study, students will move through the project stages at different paces and would move their name to the appropriate stage on the chart throughout the unit.

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Small Moments that Matter ? Personal Narrative

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