Page 90 - SpringBoard_Writing_Workshop_Grade7_Flipbook

ACTIVITY 2
Writing a Nonfiction Narrative as a Class
WRITING PROMPT: Consider a time when something happened to you that taught you a lesson about life, a lesson that other seventh graders (your audience) might benefit from learning. Write a narrative about your experience encouraging other seventh graders to think about the lesson you learned from going through it. Be sure to think about the elements of a good story that make
it engaging and entertaining—in other words, what makes the reader want to keep reading it. Develop your story with descriptions and details, and use your voice as a storyteller to relate your actions, your responses at the time, and your reflections on the significance of the experience. Use feedback from your peers to help you strengthen your narrative and clarify its significance to you. Your essay should meet the requirements listed in the learning targets for narrative essays.
Be sure to
• Engage the reader by establishing a clear context and setting
• Use narrative techniques such as dialogue, pacing, and description to
develop the setting, characters, and events
• Organize your narrative to create a clear, logical sequence
• Include descriptive techniques such as precise diction and sensory detail to
capture actions and engage your reader
• Provide a conclusion that reflects on the significance of the experience
Refer to the Scoring Guide for this writing task at the end of the workshop to help you understand where to focus your attention and efforts.
Prewriting
1. Use a graphic organizer to help you brainstorm other ideas for topics inspired by Gutman’s narrative.
Students should make a word web or other graphic organizer. Students’ responses might include memories they never want to forget, stories about lucky or surprising moments, stories about sports, stories about being embarrassed, stories about school, and so on.
2. As your teacher tells you several stories out loud, take notes on each one, focusing on which one seems the most interesting and why.
3. After you’ve chosen the story you’ll use for the class narrative, brainstorm
a list of questions based on your teacher’s brief telling of the story. Use the reporter’s questions (who, what, when, where, why, and how) to fill in details.
4. Create a graphic organizer with the headings on the next page to capture the three main parts of the story. Consider how much description and detail each section will need, considering that you want to use these techniques to capture the action in the scenes you include.
Writing Workshop 7 • Narrative Nonfiction 5
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