Personal Narrative Writing Teaching Resources
Explore personal narrative writing in your ELA classes this year with graphic organizers, writing prompts and more activities created by teachers for teachers like you!
Aligned with both TEKS and the Common Core ELA curriculum, this collection of printable and digital resources is stocked with everything you need to plan lessons on writing personal narrative essays this school year. Explore prompts designed to help students get started writing their personal stories, graphic organizers that can help them prepare their thoughts and plenty more.
Whether it's your first year teaching about personal narratives or you're just looking for some handy tips and tools for your lesson plans, our teacher team has you covered! Read on for a personal narrative definition, examples of this type of writing and more.
What Is a Personal Narrative? A Kid-Friendly Definition
Let's start with a simple personal narrative definition you can use to introduce this writing type to your students!
A personal narrative is a story about something that happened to us. It is a way we can use our writing skills to share our experiences and our feelings about things that have happened with others.
How to Start a Personal Narrative — Tips for Students to Get Started
Like many other forms of writing, personal narratives are made up of three main parts:
- Introduction
- Body
- Conclusion
But what does that introduction to a personal story or personal essay actually look like? Personal narratives typically start with the writer sharing an interesting fact in the form of a catchy opening sentence.
The goal of the personal narrative introduction is to hook your reader with something so engaging that they want to keep reading and learn all about your experience!
For example, a writer might grab the reader's attention by sharing a surprising element of their personal story right in the very first sentence.
