Personal Narratives CHAPTER FOCUS LESSON 1: What Makes a Good Personal Narrative? LESSON 2: Introduction, Body, and Conclusion • GRAMMAR: Nouns • WRITING SKILLS: Sentence Variety • STUDY SKILLS: Thesaurus • WORD STUDY: Exact Words • SPEAKING AND LISTENING SKILLS: Oral Personal Narratives • WRITER’S WORKSHOP: Personal Narratives
SUPPORT MATERIALS Practice Book Writing, pages 132–136 Assessment Book Chapter 1 Writing Skills, pages 43–44 Personal Narrative Writing Prompt, pages 45–46
WHAT IS A PERSONAL NARRATIVE? Personal narratives are written to share significant events in writers’ lives. They are personal to the core, and at their best they are revealing and relevant to others. A good personal narrative includes the following:
■■ A topic relating to a real event in the writer’s life ■■ A first-person point of view ■■ A tone appropriate for the intended audience ■■ A voice that allows the narrator’s personality to come through ■■ A structure that includes an engaging introduction, a cohesive body, and a satisfying conclusion
■■ A coherent organization that uses time order and excludes unnecessary details ■■ A variety of sentence types ■■ Prose that includes exact nouns, adjectives, and verbs Use the following titles to offer your students examples of well-crafted personal narratives.
Angels of Mercy: The Army Nurses of World War II by Betsy Kuhn Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank The Hidden Children by Howard Greenfeld
Rubrics Student, page 251y Teacher, page 251z Loyola Press Online Assessment System Grammar Sections 1, pages 1–26 Customizable Lesson Plans www.voyagesinenglish.com
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I like narrative storytelling as being part of a tradition, a folk tradition.
214a • Chapter 1
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—Bruce Springsteen