Personal Narratives

This week we are going to be wrapping up our Personal Narratives Writing Unit.  This is the second year I've taught this unit, and I'm pleased to say that I'm feeling more comfortable with it this time around. The kiddos are really into it too!  

Our first grade team used Lucy Calkin's Personal Narratives Writing Unit to plan this unit, but also got a lot of ideas from Writing Fundamentals K-1 Personal Narrative Unit.  We started by introducing a few "Mentor Texts." These books guide our work throughout the unit.  Our favorites were The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco and The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant.  In both of these books, the authors tells compelling stories about family and tradition.  They describe special items and places with rich details and vivid language.  As we read our Mentor Texts, we developed an Anchor Chart to remind us of the important features of Personal Narratives.  At the beginning of each mini-lesson we review the Anchor Chart to remind the ourselves what type of story we are creating.

The kiddos started their pre-writing by thinking of special scenes and stories from their childhood (however short it's been).  I modeled thinking about teaching my younger brother how to ride his bike.  Then we moved on to thinking about traditions and rituals from our families.  I modeled writing about my family's tradition of going out to eat on the first day of school.  The kiddos really love to hear my personal stories and it's a great way to demonstrate the steps of the writing process that I want them to mimic.  One of my wonderful co-workers designed a graphic organizer to help the kiddos outline the beginning, middle, and end of their stories. Once they had their plan, they took off drafting their personal narratives.  It's so cute to see them get excited to share stories of losing their first teeth, going to movie theater for the first time, spending summer vacation with family, and visiting grandparents for the holidays.

We are now deep in the writing process and the kiddos are busy revising and editing. I'll post about how this goes soon!