Instructional Strategies
Activities for the narrative writing unit:
As the students learn to identify descriptive writing:
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As individuals and then in groups, create and share "padlets" and collect examples of
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Descriptive writing​ (and local color)
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Action
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Dialogue (only dialogue that is natural and that builds characters' personalities)
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Personal reflections
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In groups students will compare their padlets and identify examples to share with the whole class.
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Students will practice descriptive writing (with settings) individually and peer-edit each other's descriptions.
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Students will color-code​
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action verbs​
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adjectives
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phrases
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Students will write descriptions of caricatured people, using the same "active descriptions" technique they practiced while describing settings.​​
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Students can use this video presentation that illustrates how to build a descriptive style.​
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5. Students will practice writing dialogue between imaginary characters. The foci are:
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Dialogue tags (not just "said" and "replied").
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Quotation mark punctuation, indentation, and rules.
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Natural dialogue, with accents, vernacular, jargon...
Students will peer edit, and pairs of students will share good dialogue with the
whole class.
6. Students will write a whole story, peer edit classmates' stories, and turn in a
finished narrative for a final summative grade.