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Personal Narrative

Personnal Narrative


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Definition:

A personal narrative, written in first person, documents a person’s experience. It could tell of a single life shaping event, or simply a mundane daily experience. A personal narrative is often one of the first types of writing. It includes experiences encountered, read, observed or heard.

Purpose:

  • To share a personal experience

Characteristics:

Themes:

  • Psychological impact
  • Often reflects inner voice

Characters:

  • Linked to life-changing events

Setting:

  • Meaningful context in which the events occurred

Plot:

  • Decision points in a series of events

Author’s craft:

  • Description
  • Action-filled
  • Dialogue
  • Specific detail (who, what, when, where, why, how)
  • Expressive, colorful language
  • Writing for varied audiences
  • Developing significance through implicit and explicit messages that convey meaning
  • Sensory description indicating strong feelings
  • Short composition
  • Author as expert
  • Events recorded and recounted
  • Metaphors and similes
  • Structures: chronological approach, flashback sequence, and/or reflective mode

Grade Level Instructional Scope for COMPOSING the Genre and Text of Personal Narrative:

Grade K

Opportunities to Teach:

Grade 1

Opportunities to Teach:

  • Writing process
  • Basic form
  • Purpose
  • Character, setting and events
  • Illustrating to convey meaning
  • Developing importance
  • Writing process
  • Basic form
  • Purpose
  • Character, setting and events
  • Illustrating to convey meaning
  • Beginning, middle and end
  • Identify problems and solutions
  • Chronological sequence
  • Transitional words: before, after, now and finally
  • Sense of story
  • Developing importance
Grade 2

Opportunities to Teach:

Grade 6

Opportunities to Teach:

  • Writing process
  • Basic form
  • Purpose
  • Character, motivations, setting and events
  • Illustrating to convey meaning
  • Identify problems and solutions
  • Chronological sequence
  • Transitional words: before, after, now and finally
  • Sense of story
  • Literary devices: illustrations, titles, story events, comparisons, metaphors or similes, to reveal characters’ thoughts and actions
  • Developing importance
  • Writing process
  • Form
  • Purpose
  • Structure
  • Literary and plot devices e.g. internal conflicts, external conflicts, antagonist/ protagonist, personification
  • Replicate author’s style and patterns
  • Titles, leads and endings
  • Consistency of text features
  • Developing importance

Booklists:

Access to the Documents:

Complete K-8 Genre Project
From the Michigan Department of Education

Complete K-8 Genre Booklist
From Kent Intermediate School District


Page last modified on August 16, 2010, at 03:28 PM