Great narrative writing asks students to do two things: build strong stories of their own, and notice how strong stories are built. This hub is split into both halves — lessons that walk students through writing their own narrative, and lessons that use animated shorts as mentor texts to analyze how published stories work. Move through them in order, or use whichever section fits what your class needs right now.
After completing this workshop, you'll be equipped to teach students to:
Ten lessons walking students through the craft of narrative writing, start to finish.
A general-overview capstone pulling every technique above into one checklist — a great last stop before students draft their own narrative.
A fun mid-workshop break with five writing prompts spanning multiple writing types — a nice change of pace between the core lessons above.
The lessons in Part 2 are drawn from a larger series covering reading and writing skills across many Common Core standards, all built around short animated films.
Strong narrative writers do more than follow a formula — they've internalized how good stories work because they've written them and studied them side by side. Move through Part 1 to build the skills, then use Part 2 anytime students need a mentor text to see those same techniques in action.
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