• Revising existing units: Others may redesign an existing unit. This means you have taught a unit in the past or have one at your disposal and feel the need to revise all or part of it. Maybe you need to tweak lessons, make the culminating assessment more rigorous, add more engaging activities, write or revise guiding questions, and so forth.
• Critiquing a new or previously adopted textbook or curriculum: You may use what you learn to ensure the published material satisfies the need for rigor and aligns to standards and other goals. Some resources might include an overwhelming amount of effective (and ineffective) strategies, activities, assessments, pedagogy, writing ideas, and so on. With new knowledge, you can critique what is available and make conscientious decisions, such as revising, augmenting, or bypassing mediocre material you encounter.
The aforementioned foundation book, The Fundamentals of (Re)designing Writing Units, is a recommended prerequisite for each book in the series, including this one. The following briefly summarizes that book; if you are familiar with its topics, you might choose to forgo reading it and dive into this book’s focus on narrative.
• Chapter 1 summarizes the research related to writing and provides recommendations for instruction; an overview of the different writing types (narrative, descriptive, expository, persuasive); and their characteristics, purposes, and associated genres. It also features a writing continuum to vertically and horizontally plot standards.
• Chapter 2 focuses on the stages of the writing process, various instructional strategies, and resources for digital communities and technology to be used throughout the stages.
• Chapter 3 tackles the backward-planning approach to unit design with attention to the beginning stage—identifying standards and using them to articulate what you want students to know (K), understand (U), and be able to do (D), plus unit- and lesson-guiding questions.
• Chapter 4 focuses on evidence of student learning, particularly culminating writing assessments. It features types of performance assessments, writing prompts and examples, student writing checklists, and rubrics. This chapter also includes suggestions for using student writing models, grading, calibrating, and determining anchor papers.
• Chapter 5 moves to lesson design, specifically the gradual release of responsibility model for teaching a new skill, strategy, or process. It explains each phase of this lesson approach, a concrete lesson example, and ideas for differentiating instruction.
• Chapter 6 is all about launching the unit. The text describes piloting the unit and reflecting on lessons to perfect the design and provides revision suggestions for the next time you teach this unit.
I intend for each book to guide you in designing and conducting a seamless unit of instruction for writing, one that raises the bar for students and builds teachers’ capacity. All books in the series, including this one on narrative, contain templates, checklists, rubrics, writing prompts, assessments, instructional strategies, and more—all couched in a backward-design process—for you to plan a quality-driven unit that guides and empowers students to compose a sound written piece. (Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy to access materials related to these books.)
Who This Book Is For
This book is primarily for subject-matter teachers, curriculum designers, or literacy coaches who expect students to read and author narrative-oriented content in grades 5–12. The you I address refers to any reader invested in delivering or designing curriculum aligned to narrative writing in these grades. Those who serve elementary students may also find this book beneficial, as they can adapt the material as needed.
Although you can read this book independently, I recommend that you work with colleagues to plan the writing unit together. Consider working as a department, a collaborative group within the context of a professional learning community, or an interdisciplinary team, if appropriate.
Although language arts teachers are responsible for addressing a variety of writing and other literacy standards, other subject-area teachers might also ask students to produce a coherent and organized written narrative piece. As stated earlier, social studies, science, and mathematics, for example, present ripe opportunities for students to write. The choices are endless for infusing narrative writing in a single content area, in a core subject (humanities), or in an interdisciplinary situation where different teachers share students from across subject areas.
Consider collaborating with colleagues to identify which narrative writing skills each will target and teach to delineate expectations so teachers are not inadvertently missing skills or overlapping their instruction. For instance, if those who teach science communicate to the language arts teacher that students will produce a descriptive piece to accompany a science model, the language arts teacher can focus instruction on imagery and strong word choice. A social studies teacher can focus instruction around research to accumulate historically accurate facts about content while the language arts teacher can discuss the characteristic elements and structure of historical fiction. Teaming with others to divvy up skills and standards that each will be accountable for will help ensure an optimal written piece.
In The Fundamentals of (Re)designing Writing Units (Glass, 2017a), I discuss and suggest creating a writing continuum as part of a curriculum mapping project that a school or district can undertake. The continuum articulates genres and related skills across grades and subjects to provide transparency so you can plan and lead instruction accordingly to expose students to the essential writing practices. Doing so can avoid unnecessary repetition of instruction year after year on the same genre, such as a personal narrative or a realistic short story, focusing on the exact same expectations. You might consider spearheading or suggesting such a curriculum mapping project so students acquire a deep understanding of several genres across the years.
If you teach in a self-contained classroom, collaborate with job-alike colleagues to brainstorm and create a unit together. Logistically, you and others could generate a Google Doc (or utilize another electronic collaborative tool) so each can contribute to the pieces that will eventually make the final product a robust unit. Some of you may be in a small district, where you are the only teacher for one or more grades or content areas. Try to work virtually with colleagues in other counties or schools. Or consider collaborating with content-area teachers in or across appropriate grade clusters in your school and create a unit together to share. Even if these situations are not feasible, this book can still provide the necessary tools to re-envision what you teach and how you teach writing to your students.
About Timed Assessment
Although this book will prepare students for standardized writing situations that assess their narratives, it is not about students responding to an on-demand writing prompt in a timed situation. You might issue such a prompt for different assessment purposes before or during instruction to gauge what students know and to inform your instruction. This book focuses primarily on designing or redesigning a complete and rigorous narrative writing unit of instruction in which students advance through the steps of the writing process. As such, you can use an analytic rubric as an instructional tool and to score and gather information to improve the quality of students’ writing. When students participate in a demanding and engaging writing unit, it prepares them well for a district- or state-mandated test:
In schools with a major emphasis on standardized tests, teachers are prone to conclude that their own assessments must always approximate the nature of the year-end standardized test so students will be “ready” for that test when it comes.… However, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that if all teaching is proscribed by the very limited and limiting format of a particular test, students’ learning experiences are woefully restricted.… If they learn better because of how we teach and assess them, it’s likely they will fare better on standardized tests than if we insist on teaching them in