Lesson 2: Teaching Narration
Children love to tell stories. Just spend a little time with a child and soon she will be telling you all about her baby sister, or where she went for dinner last night, or what she wants for Christmas. That's narration!
What is Narration?
When students write narratives, they are telling a story. That story can be based on real events, or it can be made up. In either case, all good narratives need to have several important elements.
First, a story needs characters - the people or animals who take part in the story. These can be real people that the child knows, or they can be part of a fantasy story that the child makes up. There can be many characters, or just a few.
A story also needs to have a setting. That is where the story takes place. Again, this can be a real place, or an imaginary one. The setting can be one place, or many, depending upon the complexity of the story.
All stories have a plot, or the action of the story. Even a simple story about what a child did last night will have a plot. Perhaps he came home from school on the bus. Then he did his homework. Next he watched TV, and finally he helped his mother get ready for dinner. These are all part of the action that took place.
And in a good story, there will be a problem and events that lead to a solution. These are the events that motivate the characters to act and move through the story. Perhaps the boy in the story above needed to decide what to watch on TV. That is part of the problem. His solution may be to choose a favorite show, or to decide there is nothing really good on and turn off the TV. The details of the problems and solutions that characters encounter will vary depending upon the complexity of the story being written.
These elements can be real or imaginary, but every good story has them!
