Writing
Launching with Personal Narrative Stories
Unit 1 Week 1 - 6
Overarching Questions and Enduring
Understandings
How do writers write personal narrative stories that elaborate the
tension or problem and focus upon an important message or heart of the story?
Writing 
Fifth grade students will be required to write narratives in
which they orient their reader by establishing a situation and introducing a
narrator or characters with the event sequence unfolding naturally. Additionally, students are expected to use details including dialogue,
descriptions of actions, thoughts, and feelings, use temporal words and phrases
to signal event order, and provide a sense of closure. The goal of this unit is
for students to write personal narrative stories that elaborate the tension or
problem and focus upon an important message or heart of the story. Additionally, students revisit qualities of good writing and craft to write
personal narratives. They will select their best work to revise, edit, and
publish.
Lessons are designed to
teach writers how to navigate through the process: generating story ideas,
rehearsing for writing, drafting, rereading, revising and publishing. Mid-unit, children will choose their best work and revise this more deeply and
extensively to share with an audience. Students will begin a second personal
narrative piece as an independent writing project guided by previous sessions,
anchor charts, conferences and small groups. Students will learn ways to raise
the level of their writing within their independent writing project working at
their own pace within the writing process. The unit culminates with students
surveying their growth, recognizing their growing knowledge of good writing,
their increasing repertoires of writing strategies and their success with
cycling through the writing process in order to name their strengths but also
determine future goals.