How to Teach Personal Narrative Writing for Third Grade
Third graders are certainly capable of telling stories. It’s not terribly difficult to teach them how to put their words in writing, and rearrange the words into an organized and interesting story. The personal narrative perspective is quite familiar to most eight year olds.
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Instructions
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Tell the students what you mean by personal narrative. Be sure they understand how to add narration to a story they are involved in. This is very much how third graders verbally tell their stories already.
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Offer choices of story prompts like, “One day my dad came home in a car full of doughnuts," or the old “What I did for summer vacation.” Give the children class time to ask questions and discuss ideas for the project. Guide them with questions like “how did you feel when that happened? What did it look like?”
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Ask the students to write their story idea on paper and skip two lines between each line of writing. Ask them to read their stories aloud to themselves to see if the sentences make sense. Let them make the corrections they see fit in the lines between their text.
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Ask the students to read their revised first drafts to the class. Ask for editorial comments. Let the whole class be party to the corrections you identify for story order, logic and grammar. Then have each student choose an editor to check their spelling.
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Ask the students to take all their revisions and corrections and write the story as a finished product.
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Have each child read their story in front of the class and take a couple of questions or comments. Add your own constructive and encouraging comments before bringing up the next budding author.
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