How to Teach Narrative Writing

You’ve worked so hard all year helping your students draw, label, and write sentences, and now it’s time to take the next step: narrative writing! If your students can draw pictures, label them, and write a sentence using a simple stem, they’re ready to write their own stories with a beginning, middle, and end.

How to Prepare Students for Narrative Writing 

If your students can draw pictures, label, and write a sentence using a simple sentence stem then you are ready for my Narrative Writing Unit!

Classrooms are filled to the brim with stories. Whether they are fictional or factual, you and your students are talking about stories multiple times a week. Now it’s time for them to write their own! 

Narrative writing is the art (yes, it can be art even when the author is 5 or 6!) of writing a true story with a beginning, middle, and end. Writing stories, narrative or not, goes hand in hand with reading! While reading stories it is so important to discuss beginning, middle, and end not only to help strengthen students’ comprehension skills but to prepare them and build a solid foundation for their writing skills as well! 

So…What Exactly Am I Getting?

The Narrative Writing Unit includes twenty scripted lesson plans so that you can be absolutely certain that you have a step by step guide on how to level up your students’ writing and get them ready for first grade. Not only will you have access to four weeks of scripted lessons but also all the worksheets, anchor charts, directed drawings, parent letters, and much more. You can see a full list here!

What Does This Look Like In a Classroom?

First, students will use a “Heart Map” to draw out all the things that are important to them (woohoo! It’s a good thing you grabbed that illustration unit! But if you didn’t it’s not too late to grab it here). This map allows students to look back over their lives and decide on a topic to write their story about. 

After students have found their topic, students will begin the hard work of drawing out their beginning, middle, and end! Next, they add sentences to each illustration using transitional words. But don’t panic, this unit is filled with step by step lessons reminding your students how to stretch out words, use the word wall, copy labels from their illustrations, and anything else they may need to write their stories. You’ll have access to 2 different options for a rough draft, 12 directed drawings so your students can add detailed settings to their stories, and 9 anchor charts! You won’t be running around the classroom with children shouting your name 4 million times… okay well that might still happen but at least you will know you taught them everything they need to know! 

The Narrative Writing Unit ensures that students are met wherever they are with its three differentiated book options. Ultimately, with this unit as a guide your students, no matter their writing level, will be well on their way to writing independently. 

Celebrate your students’ hard work with a writer’s celebration, giving them a chance to share their stories with peers and families. This unit makes narrative writing manageable, fun, and meaningful—and sets your students up for success as confident, independent writers.

You can see the entire unit and all that is included here. If you are reading this and not quite sure if you and your students are ready to take the leap into story writing, I have so many other resources to get them the knowledge they need to be independent writers! Check out my labeling unit  or see all my kindergarten writing resources here!