Personal narrative ideas are easier to find than students think. The hard part is helping them see the difference between a whole day and one moment worth writing about. These are the two lessons I used at the start of the year to help students find seed ideas: watermelon stories versus seed stories, then a map of their own street.
I always started the year with narrative writing, mainly taking small moments and stretching them out. First, I shared a “watermelon story” that I usually made up on the spot. You probably know the kind:
One time, I went to the beach. It was a long trip there. Finally we got there. I was so excited! I ran to the ocean as soon as I could. I played in the waves. I made a sand castle. I caught a crab. Then we went out to eat for dinner. Then we went to sleep at our hotel. The END
One tiny moment from that day, stretched out so the reader feels like they’re there, like the first time you rode a wave in on your boogie board.
Not waking up, AND walking the shore, AND building a sand castle, AND catching a crab. Just the wave.
I called that first one a watermelon story because it has WAAAAY too many seeds. Every one of those events could be its own story.
We talked about which seed from the watermelon could become a better story, and why. I shared a couple of these made-up stories so students could practice spotting the seeds.
Next, we sorted events as a class. Students explained why each one belonged with the watermelon or worked as a seed on its own.
Then it was time for students to think of their own ideas. In their writing notebooks, they listed two big “watermelon” events from their lives, then narrowed each one down to three seeds. That gave them six seeds to write about later.
Watermelon vs. seedA watermelon story lists everything that happened. A seed story stretches out one small moment.
One thing most kids know all about is the street they live on, so a street map was my next step for collecting seed ideas.
Students drew a map of their street in their writing notebooks and labeled everything they could.
Then I gave them sticky notes. On each one, they told about something that happened at a specific spot on their map.
If a student had a hard time remembering things on their street, they could improvise. The point was to give them ideas they could turn into stories later, so real or fictional seeds both worked.
Student street maps with sticky note seed ideas
Each sticky note works just like a seed from the watermelon lesson: one place, one moment, ready to stretch into a personal narrative.
All of these seeds lived in one place: my students’ Writer’s Collection Notebook. It was a composition notebook we used for almost everything. Students collected ideas to write about, took notes or did activities that went with my mini-lessons, and brainstormed for their writing pieces.
It also kept me from going crazy with papers falling out of folders or getting lost!
Early in the year, I also read If You Find a Rock aloud and had students jot down the memories each page sparked. Then they turned their favorites into memory jars. You can see how that worked in my If You Find a Rock post.
If you teach 4th or 5th grade, my Everything but the Books narrative writing unit has the lesson plans for the whole unit, with reading and mentor sentence lessons built in. It’s also part of the bundle with opinion and informational writing.
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