So personal narratives, or a story from one's own life, should be one of the easiest types of writing to do, right? But that blank white piece of paper staring at the average 4th grader is still a daunting canvas. As a teacher, I have really changed the amount of time I spend on pre-writing. First, I like to convince my students that they actually do have stories to tell!
I start off very innocuously, mentioning some memories from my childhood of very typical childhood experiences. This may happen at odd times, like snack time or morning meeting starting several days before we are set to begin the unit. I may mention the time I had to get stitches, the time I went camping, the time I had a wiggly tooth and my dad yanked it out with a pair of pliers! And you know what? Nearly every hand in the room is up wanting to tell their memories of those experiences. Next, we played a little game with a deck of conversation cards--we sat in a circle and passed the cards. Each student drew a card--like "Tell about a time you were surprised" and then told a quick story about their life experience. Then my students decided they would like to do a couple of rounds in their table groups so they would get to "tell more stories". Yeah! Exactly what I was hoping for! I used a deck of conversation cards that I happened to find in Iceland (fortunately the cards were in both Icelandic and English!).
With all those stories and memories swirling in our heads, it's now time to do some "heart mapping". There are various lessons and ideas out there on this concept, but I really like Georgia Heard's Heart Mapping activity.
Students select their favorite narrative idea and then pair up to retell the story to a partner. I find that telling the story first makes it much easier to write about. And after all this idea generating, we will soon be ready for those blank white pages! More coming soon...
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