1. Conduct a lesson on a narrative topic or related topics—for example, setting and imagery or plot with suspense. Then allow students time to produce a graphic organizer or draft of a paragraph based on the lesson focus for their own narratives. They collect this work in a folder or electronically. Conduct another lesson focused on a topic and again give time for students to draft something for their own narratives and add it to their ongoing collection. Repeat this sequence. Later, they use these prewriting pieces to compose their first drafts.
Table 1.2: Narrative Writing Unit Map Item Options—KUDs and Guiding Questions
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy for a free reproducible version of this table.
Table 1.3: Detailed Unit Map Excerpt—ELA
* L = Lesson
Table 1.4: Detailed Unit Map Excerpt—Interdisciplinary ELA and History
* L = Lesson
2. In another approach, lead a series of lessons in succession that introduce all the literary elements, devices, and forms of figurative language. When students prewrite and compose their first draft, they take everything they learned into account and apply it wholesale for their narratives.
Your map should reflect these decisions since it catalogs not only the order for teaching skills to sequence the unit but also the approach for how to write a narrative. The first approach can assist students who are fairly new to narrative writing or less experienced writers because it gives them a place to start their first drafts by accessing various existing prewriting tools they’ve accumulated throughout the unit as opposed to a blank slate. Students might decide to scrap or completely change any accumulated work when they finally begin the first draft, but at least they have some material to begin the writing process. Either path, however, can produce the same results provided that you devote the necessary time and energy to map out a sound unit and teach effectively.
Consideration of Existing Resources
As you develop your map, scrutinize your existing resources to choose materials that match what you want students to know, understand, and do. To accomplish this goal, review your textbook or other resources carefully if you have not already, and intentionally find the parts that serve the goals of the narrative unit you are building. If you use a textbook or other curriculum, you might change the order of what a writer or publisher thinks is the best sequence and take charge of how you want to teach the unit based on your expertise and preference. For example, you could decide to focus on setting before characters, which might contradict the table of contents in a literature textbook you use.
To determine which texts you will use to teach standards-based skills, scour the resources at your disposal (anthology, textbook, or other materials). Identify which complex texts complement your unit and aptly exemplify what you will teach—elements of literature, literary devices, figurative language, writing style, and so forth. If you use the more detailed unit map (tables 1.3 and 1.4, pages 18–19), record the text resources with page numbers to prime yourself for the lesson design phase. If you use the less comprehensive map (table 1.2, pages 11–17), consider adding a column for resources or jotting them down on a separate document. By undertaking this exercise, you familiarize yourself with the available resources and prepare for devising your own lessons or revising what the teacher’s guide might offer.
Although publishers propose certain elements or devices tied to a story, you are the final arbiter of this decision. For illustrative purposes, I vetted a literature textbook for grade 8 and highlight my findings for two selections: Walter Dean Myers’s (1997) “The Treasure of Lemon Brown” and W. W. Jacobs’s (1997) “The Monkey’s Paw.”
“The Treasure of Lemon Brown”
I concur with the publisher’s recommendation that character portrayal plays a key role in Walter Dean Myers’s (1997) “The Treasure of Lemon Brown.” However, setting also deserves attention and warrants students’ keen examination, which is not a focus in the teacher’s guide. The following quotes supply evidence for the setting’s prominence in the story where Myers uses figurative language to describe how this element contributes to the mood.
• “The dark sky, filled with angry swirling clouds, reflected Greg Ridley’s mood as he sat on the stoop of his building” (p. T94).
• “It was beginning to cool. Gusts of wind made bits of paper dance between the parked cars” (p. T94).
• “He reached the house just as another flash of lightning changed the night to day for an instant, then returned the graffiti-scarred building to the grim shadows.… The inside of the building was dark except for the dim light that filtered through the dirty windows from the street lamps” (p. T95).
• “There was a footstep on the stairs, and the beam from the flashlight danced crazily along the peeling wallpaper” (p. T99).
Therefore, when perusing textbooks, use your professional judgment and learning outcomes to determine aspects of narrative worthy to target as a teaching focus.
“The Monkey’s Paw”
In W. W. Jacobs’s (1997) “The Monkey’s Paw,” the publisher aptly highlights suspense and irony. Like the short story previously mentioned, this text is also ripe for exploring the setting and the mood it creates. These excerpts and others within the story can testify to this.
• “Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlor of the Lakesnam Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly.” (p. T185)
• “‘That’s the worst of living so far out,’ bawled Mr. White, with sudden and unlooked-for violence; ‘of all the beastly, slushy, out-of-the-way places to live in, this is the worst. Pathway’s a bog, and the road’s a torrent.’” (p. T186)
Both of these stories appear within the same literature textbook about one hundred pages apart. Since they both exemplify an author’s use of setting to create mood, I would expose students to each story in succession to illustrate this element and literary device. Additionally, juxtaposing the authors’ treatment of language to create different moods would prompt worthwhile analysis. By carefully perusing the entire offerings of complex text in any resource—textbook, anthology, prepackaged curriculum—you can devise a unit map and develop lessons that might prove more effective than if you rely solely