write a personal narrative 20-25 words about a time when you were able to achieve a goal or learn something new. Use the graphic organizer below to udeate and then write your personal narrative on the next page.
Answers
Answer:
Narrative Writing Needs Structure:
One year when I was teaching fifth grade I thought it would be a great idea to end our literature genre
study of mysteries by having the students write a mystery of their own. After six weeks of planning,
conferencing, drafting, editing, drafting, editing, conferencing, editing, re-writing, drafting, planning, drafting,
editing, I was ready to kill myself. I could see the headlines: REAL LIFE MYSTERY: TEACHER DIES
TEACHING MYSTERY UNIT I didn’t literally kill myself, but the amount of work involved did kill a small
part of my brain. In the end, the mysteries were written, most of them anyway, but I think I wrote huge sections
for some students. Most of the mysteries made no sense and they were either way, way, way too long (18
chapters in one case) or way, way, way too short (4 paragraphs). I vowed I would never do it again.
The next year, new fifth graders arrived in my classroom asking, “Are we going to get to write
mysteries like last year’s class? My friend said it was her favorite part of the year!” Sadly, I realized I needed
to do it again. But I needed to do it differently. Students needed a structure, and they needed more practice on
the sub-skills of writing. Since they had been reading mostly novels, they needed to understand what a SHORT
mystery might look like. They needed a model of a five-chapter mystery in which each chapter was about two
double-spaced pages. The whole thing would be total of about 10 double-spaced pages! Once I figured out the
structure, the rest was easy — well, not easy, but much, much more manageable.