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Writing: Personal Narrative VIDEO Unit

Grade Level: 2nd Grade, 3rd Grade, 4th Grade, 5th Grade

Let’s make this simple. Our ready-to-use personal narrative writing videos make teaching writing as easy as pushing play. This incredible done-for-you writing resource for grades 2-5 includes 40 pre-recorded video mini-lessons taught by an experienced elementary school teacher.

More about this resource

The recorded mini lessons in these personal narrative videos and accompanying activities will teach your students how to write a small-moment story with dialogue, a strong lead, interesting word choice, and paragraphs. Everything your students need to write a personal narrative is provided in this resource.

Focused mini-lessons are short to keep kids engaged. They begin with a brief overview of the lesson and what supplies students will need. The teacher explicitly models skills, including how to set up the writer’s notebook and complete student printables, how to cut efficiently, where to paste materials, and more. The teacher also tells students when to pause the video to complete daily activities.

Student-friendly mentor texts are read aloud and displayed during the videos to provide illustrative examples of new writing skills. Copies of the mentor text passages are also included in the resource if you want a printed copy for your students. However, printed copies are completely optional as the video reads the full text of the passages.

The teacher then models new writing skills by completing anchor charts on the video and encourages students to follow along on the included student printables. The accompanying daily writing tasks simplify the writing process to help ALL students, even reluctant writers, experience success and develop confidence.

Best of all, the personal narrative writing videos make writing fun for ALL your students–from reluctant writers to excited writers. The lessons are taught by an experienced elementary teacher who is warm and engaging. She consistently offers encouragement and support to students to keep them motivated.

With less time planning and teaching whole group lessons, you’ll have more time to focus on differentiation. The Student Success Path helps you identify where your students are on their writing journey and plan just-right lessons and interventions. Conference materials, including outlines and topic cards, guide your small group discussions making differentiation easy.

All of these writing videos allow students to choose their writing topics. Choice empowers students to write about things they care about and makes them more invested in their writing. And that’s a big deal because students who enjoy writing and get lots of practice perform better on standardized testing.

Plus, these materials are easy-to-use and require no advance lesson planning. The Writing Lessons PDF provides a detailed summary of each lesson including: the essential question, student task, required materials, and a direct link to the video. Included reading of mentor texts and digital task cards also make these writing activities low prep, saving time and paper.

How the Writing Videos are Aligned with the Science of Reading:

Structured writing routine: Our personal narrative writing unit is carefully structured, beginning with foundational skills before moving into more advanced skills. Students are taught a systematic approach to writing: including brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing.
Explicit instruction: Daily lessons begin with explicit instruction including access to examples via mentor texts, modeling, and directed practice. Each skill is broken down into bite-size pieces so that students can learn one skill at a time. Students practice skills independently, working on one sentence or paragraph at a time.
Differentiation: Differentiation is built into writing assignments both by the amount and complexity of what students write. Writing can also be differentiated through small group instruction that provides reteaching, additional practice, and support at appropriate levels.
Daily opportunities to write: The majority of the writing lesson is reserved for independent writing time, providing students with large blocks of time to write every day.
Demonstrates the connection between reading and writing: Mentor texts provide concrete examples of writing skills and allow children to experiment with and apply sophisticated skills and language in their own writing. In addition, constructing their own writing pieces helps students recognize and understand these strategies when reading.

What’s Inside:

Writing Lessons PDF for teachers with clickable links
40 Personal Narrative Video Writing Lessons (average length 8-12 minutes each) easily accessible via QR code
14 Mentor texts passages
Student notebook covers and dividers
Student printables & digital student notebooks
48 Printable and digital Task cards (can be assigned through Google Forms)
Rubrics
Publishing paper
Student Success Path
Conferencing materials
Detailed teacher directions

Skills covered:

Students learn how to write a small moment story with dialogue, a strong lead, interesting word choice, and paragraphs. Lessons include:

Setting up your writing notebook
Setting goals
What is a personal narrative?
Generating story ideas
Narrowing your story idea to a small moment
Rehearsing and drafting
Writing a lead
Adding and punctuating dialogue
Adding details
Word choice
Show, don’t tell
Breaking writing into paragraphs
Transition words
Writing an ending
Editing
Publishing

❤️❤️ Why You Will LOVE This Resource ❤️❤️

Makes teaching writing simple.
Save hours of planning and prep time. All writing lessons are pre-recorded–just play and watch. The video walks students through every step of the writing lesson.
No hunting down mentor texts. All required passages are read to students on the video (optional copies of the mentor texts are provided).
Pre-printed student anchor charts make it easy for students to follow along without having to write every word and draw complicated diagrams.
Save time prepping and grading. Digital student notebooks and task cards that can be completed via Google Forms save time.
Direct writing instruction provides a solid foundation of writing skills that leads to increased test scores.
These lessons work for all students, even students below grade level.
Aligned to the Science of Reading

A Typical Writing Lesson:

A typical writing lesson has two parts: the video and independent writing time. Each video averages about 8-12 minutes long (although some lessons that don’t require a lot of instruction are shorter). I recommend 10-15 minutes to view the video and complete the lesson activities and about 20 minutes of independent writing time.

The Video:

Each day, the teacher walks students step-by-step through the writing lesson:

A brief overview of the lesson and needed supplies
A mentor text reading that shows students examples of the skills they are learning (most days)
Shows student how to prepare their writing notebooks for the day’s lesson (she explicitly models how to cut and paste)
Modeling new skills using an anchor chart on the video
Pause for independent writing time to practice new skills
Brief wrap up, encouragement, and a preview of the next day’s lesson
Total time: 10-15 minutes

Independent Work Time:

Students will apply the skill they just learned in their writing each day. The included writing tasks make it crystal-clear what to do during independent writing time–for you and your students. By the end of the unit, they will have completed two full masterpieces and many other independent writings.
Total time: 20 minutes

Total Writing time: 30-35 minutes

How to use this resource:

There are a variety of ways to use the writing videos in the classroom:

Watch/assign the videos in order. The Writing Lesson PDF makes it simple.
Use as a whole group activity. Play the video on your whiteboard and pause for student writing tasks.
In classrooms with 1:1 devices, students can watch the writing videos individually during centers or for at-home work and pause to complete writing tasks. You can assign videos through Google Classroom or students can use QR codes on the video task cards to easily access videos.
Print and laminate video task cards for long-term use. Set out a new card each day for the new lesson. Teach your students to scan the QR code on their classroom electronic devices to begin watching.
Most videos are 8-12 minutes long.
Writing lessons will require about 30 minutes to complete including watching the video and completing the writing task.

Differentiation:

Allow students additional time to complete writing tasks.
Pre-recorded videos make it easy for students to rewatch lessons they find challenging.
Consider completing more complicated lessons as a whole class or in small groups.
Conferencing materials make it easy to tailor small group lessons to meet individual student needs.

Time to Complete:

The entire writing lesson should take about 30 minutes per day, including watching the pre-recorded video and completing the activities (10-15 minutes) and doing the independent writing task (about 20 minutes).

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