Second Grade Strategies for Narrative Writing

Incorporate Art

Incorporating art in a student’s writing allows the student to see the setting of the story. It also allows students to design certain story elements, such as the setting of the story, characters and the sequence of events. For instance, instruct your students to draw a series of pictures, outlining a story. Make sure they draw one picture to represent the beginning of the story, another to represent the conclusion and a few others to represent events in the story. Instruct your students to look at each picture and write a story based on the pictures they drew. Once done, staple the story together, with the pictures, to create your student’s first book.

The simplest stories students can write are a recounting of events from the child’s life, such as a story of an event over the summer, a holiday experience, or a story about a new pet. These stories allow your students to practice writing, while having the basic elements of the decided by the chosen story. As an example, if your student chose to tell the story of the first time her father brought home the new puppy, she knows the basic elements of the story. This includes the characters (her, her father and the puppy), the setting (her living room at home) and the sequence of events (her father walking in, her seeing the puppy and her hugging the puppy). Instruct your students to identify each of these elements in their stories, and write a story about their event.

For students who struggle with the task of developing their own story idea, providing them with the beginning of a story helps their creative process. This technique identifies some of the important story elements, such as the setting and some of the main characters, but leaves other elements up to the students to create. For instance, provide a short introduction, which sets the scene for the students and gives them an idea for the story, such as a paragraph that describes a dog without her collar, sneaking into someone’s backyard. Instruct your students to complete the story from the point where your paragraph left off.

Guided stories are narratives where you give the elements of the story to the writer, or chose them randomly for the writer. As an example, cut out slips of paper and write information on each slip. Include slips with different possible settings, a number of possible characters and a number of possible situations. Create enough slips for each student to select one setting, one situation and two to three characters. Instruct your students to pick their slips randomly, and write a story based on the slips of paper they chose.