One of the trickiest parts about teaching writing is trying to cater to every student. There will be some students who can barely write a sentence, others who can write pages, and then a whole heap of students in between. It’s stressful trying to support such a range of writing abilities. So, what’s the solution? The answer is to provide the same activity, but truly differentiate with activities that meet each of your students where they are at. Today, I want to support you with how to differentiate your narrative writing lessons.
What kind of writing should students produce?
When it comes to narrative writing, there’s a progression in what students are expected to produce in their first few years of schooling.
In kindergarten, they ‘use drawing, dictating, and writing to narrate a single event or several loosely linked events, tell about the events in the order in which they occurred, and provide a reaction to what happened’.
By first grade, they are expected to ‘recount two or more appropriately sequenced events, include some details regarding what happened’.
By second grade, they need to ‘recount a well-elaborated event or short sequence of events and include details to describe actions, thoughts, and feelings’.
By third grade, they have to ‘develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences’.
For first, second, and third grade, students are expected to use temporal words to signal event order and provide some sense of closure.
By third grade though, they also need to establish a situation and introduce a narrator and/or characters, as well as use dialogue and descriptions.
Adjust your expectations
Ideally, every student in your class would be capable of these grade level expectations, but we know that is not the case. There will always be students who struggle and others who go beyond what’s expected.
If you try to force your whole class to meet these expectations exactly, you’re in for a reality check! This is where relectant writers shut down because they are being pushed too hard and it’s where advanced writers lose interest because they get bored and don’t feel challenged.
So, what’s the alternative? Instead, it’s best to meet students where they are at and provide learning experiences that are appropriate to their abilities. Basically, give them the chance to produce writing that they are truly capable of.
For example, let’s say you are teaching personal narratives to your second graders. Some students may only be able to write one or two sentences about what happened. Other students might write multiple sentences or paragraphs.
It’s best to provide the same writing activity, but offer different versions and have different expectations. Struggling writers don’t like being singled out, so avoid giving them something that is vastly different to their peers in terms of topic, prompt, or worksheet.
Provide a different number of writing lines
This is a great idea as it allows students to write an appropriate amount in proportion to their abilities.
So, you would provide the same writing topic or prompt and just adjust your expectations when it comes to how many sentences or paragraphs students will produce. If you’re using worksheets or prompts, it’s best to have a different number of writing lines, so that students can write as little or as much as they can.
If you give your students the exact same worksheet, it can often lead to frustration for your learners who are struggling writers or advanced writers. There’s nothing more overwhelming to an emergent writer than a full page of small lines. They just aren’t capable of writing a lengthy narrative.
Conversely, there’s nothing more frustrating for an advanced writer than not having enough space to share their ideas. Some students love to write lengthy stories and need the space to do so!
Simply put, some students need more lines and others need less.
Cater to your student’s handwriting
While we’re on the topic of writing lines, it’s important to provide lines that are appropriate to your student’s handwriting size. Some students need bigger lines or dotted lines, others may only need smaller or plain lines.
Offer sentence starters
The size and number of writing lines is a good starting point, but full pages of lines can be daunting to struggling writers.
Some of your confident writers don’t need any support. They’ll happily just start writing on the lines provided. However, many of your students will have no idea where to begin.
This is where sentence starters come in handy. A sentence starter for a fictional narrative might be something as simple as ‘One day…’, ‘Once, there was…’, or ‘Once upon a time…’
A sentence starter for a personal narrative might be something like ‘One time, I…’ or ‘Last weekend…’
The reason why sentence starters are so wonderful is that they take away some of the initial overwhelm for students. Instead of wondering how to start the sentence or how to spell ‘once’, they can dive straight into sharing what happened to them or their character.
Sometimes sentence starters can feel like offering too much support. Students may end up only writing a small amount if most of the sentence is written for them. This is where tracing comes in. It’s great if you can offer the option for students to trace the sentence starter. It also gives them practice with spelling new words and writing neatly.
In summary
The best approach for how to differentiate your narrative writing lessons is to offer the same topic or prompt, but provide a variation in the worksheet style. Some students will thrive with a few, big dotted lines and a sentence starter, others will succeed with a large number of small, plain lines.
The most important thing is to adjust your expectations when it comes to what students can produce. Some students will include limited details regarding what happened in their story. Others might describe actions, thoughts, and feelings in great detail. The goal is to try to meet the standards, but not overwhelm or hold back students in pursuit of them.
Throughout this post, I have shared some images of differentiated narrative writing prompts. If you like the look of these prompts, be sure to check out the personal narrative prompts here and the fictional narrative prompts here!
Want to learn more about the narrative writing prompts?
Here’s a few things to know:
- There is cute clip art to color in and space for students to draw a picture.
- There is a writing checklist at the bottom of each page (reminding students about finger spaces, capital letters, punctuation, writing neatly, checking work, and sounding out words).
- There are lots of planning page options included.
- There are blank templates (in case you or you students want to write your own prompt).
- There are extra full lined writing pages, in case your students want to write more.
The Differentiation
One of the reasons that these two resources are so valuable is that each of them offer 50 prompts and each prompt is offered in 12 versions! There are 4 dotted, 5 dotted, 7 plain, and 10 plain lines to choose from. Also, there are 3 options for each line style (sentence starters, dotted sentence starters, and completely blank).
types of prompt
There are a few types of prompts. For personal narratives, students write about:
- Fun, bad, or special days & experiences
- Family & Friends
- Emotions
- Day-To-Day events
For fictional narratives, students write about topics like:
- Outer Space & Adventures
- Spooky & Magic
- Animals & Mythical Creatures
- Surprise & Mystery
- Day-To-Day
If you like the sound of the writing prompts mentioned in this post, check out the freebies first! There’s a haunted house fictional narrative prompt that’s perfect for Halloween and a first day of school personal narrative prompt that’s great for back to school.
Remember, the best way to differentiate is to offer the same topic/prompt, but different writing lines and a variation in scaffolding (sentence starters). Good luck with teaching narrative writing!
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