Sharon Feingold A planning strategy for Narrative Story Writing

Students who have difficulty with planning and monitoring during writing benefit from specific support strategies The strategy of assists with Narrative Story Writing by: 1.Scaffolding the planning process through answering structured questions that serve to generate each element of the story; and 2.Organizing and sequencing the story

Question Guide for Graphic Organizer Who are the main characters? When does the story take place? Where does the story take place? What does the main (& other) characters do or want to do? What happens when they try to do it? How does the story end How does the main character and other characters feel?

who when where _______________ ___________________________ what what how how ______________ ______________ _____________ ____________

Method Initial acquisition and application of this planning strategy is modeled by teacher. Strategy used after teacher activates background knowledge and students are ready to move to planning stage of narrative writing. Graphic Organizer used as a prewriting tool to answer prompts. Students participate in planning process with Graphic Organizer and prompts repeatedly until they know well and can use just the mnemonic.

Benefits of this Planning Strategy Allows students to see typical sequence of narrative genre. Results in longer, more complete, and qualitatively improved stories. Research-based strategy for middle school that may be used to measure students’ progress via a pretest, posttest, and generalization of skill via writing probes.

Applications Students can view or choose a picture and then write about it. Students can add an additional chapter for a story they have read. Mnemonic can be used to have students evaluate if a writer included all parts of a good narrative story. Students may use with partners in other classes.

I am going to start reading a story aloud. (In your classroom, you will also give a copy of the story to students, who can follow along.) Each time you hear one of the elements from our chart, please raise your hand. I will call on students and we will use your answers to fill out our chart. (Teacher reads excerpt and calls on students who have raised their hands to identify elements.) Let’s evaluate a narrative with

References Patel, Pooja, and Leslie Laud. "Integrating a Story Writing Strategy into a Resource Curriculum." Teaching Exceptional Children (March/April 2007).