Personal Narrative Writing - Planning and Drafting

So we've got all those ideas flowing out of us, and now it's time to commit that one special story to paper.

First I had my students take a piece of A-4 paper (regular copy paper) and fold it in half into  a "hamburger" fold.  We repeated this twice more for a total of three folds.  (It's always fun to throw a little math at them and have them predict how many rectangles they will end up with and they are usually surprised when it is not six!)   So we end up with a piece of paper divided into 8 small rectangles.

Now the kids take their story idea and plot it into the squares.  I showed them my story, all plotted out, and how I figured out the beginning and ending box first, and sort of aimed to have the most exciting part of the action in about the 5th or 6th box.  You could also look at your story on a plot diagram and talk about the rising action, the climax of the story, etc..

Hee Young plotting out her story!

Stories all plotted out

I was most excited that even my beginner ESL students had success with this.  From the drawings and their text explaining the drawings, it was fairly easy for students to work these into a first draft on their personal narratives.