Why personal narratives?
In this project we wrote narratives that represent ourselves and our journeys. We strove to tell our stories in a narrative to prepare for next year, when we will have to give colleges an idea of who we are through an essay. We refined some of our writing skills such as dialogue, description, and structure.
Project launch
To launch this project Dr. P and Ms. Soler caused a ruckus at the beginning of class. It started with Ms. Soler storming into the class, she threw papers at students and even threw her shoe at the board. Meanwhile, Dr. P juggled calmly behind her. After the commotion ended, we were asked to write a descriptive piece about what had just happened. Next we took a small surprise field trip up to the Vons shopping center where we observed people and wrote descriptive stories about what we thought there life would be like.
Baseline Essay
To see what writing skills we had and still needed, we were given one hour to write an essay about a significant moment in our lives. I wrote my essay about a surfing trip I took to Costa Rica by myself. I wrote this piece because my trip to Costa Rica was one of the most defining moments in my life.
Writing our narratives
I started writing my piece by brainstorming topics I could write about. In class, we did multiple share outs to help narrow it down. I was stuck between 3 topics: dance, growing up multi-ethnic, or my the Costa Rica trip I wrote my baseline about. Although I really love to dance ballet and being multi-ethnic is a big part of who I am, my trip was just the story I connected to most.
Like most writing assignments, I started with a down draft of all my ideas. I then added more description and cut out some irrelevant parts of my writing. As I focused in on adding more detail for the section where I talk about a surfing accident I got into while in Costa Rica, we refined our descriptive writing skills. We did this by practicing describing sea shells, we refined and made multiple drafts. My final shell description is below.
Like most writing assignments, I started with a down draft of all my ideas. I then added more description and cut out some irrelevant parts of my writing. As I focused in on adding more detail for the section where I talk about a surfing accident I got into while in Costa Rica, we refined our descriptive writing skills. We did this by practicing describing sea shells, we refined and made multiple drafts. My final shell description is below.
We also learned about writing narratives in the hero's journey structure. This structure is what most fictional narratives are written in and I includes points in the story like call to action, crisis, and resolution. I chose not to use this structure step by step because it did not fit my story. Below is a diagram of the hero's journey.
Final Draft
After having many of my peers review and revise my piece, I was able to complete my final draft.
Our Exhibition
Our exhibition was a bit last minute because in the weeks before both of our teachers were on maternity leave. Our exhibition was low key and only a few middle school classes came to see our work. I was assigned the role of reading my narrative to the whole group at exhibition. A memorable moment from our exhibition was when Dr. P snaked me. I was scheduled to read my piece second, and despite having worked really hard on my piece and preparing a lot, Dr. P cut my piece without any notice. I was extremely off put and little offended because I was the only one that didn't get to present. Additionally, people that were important to me came to see my work, so I was very disappointed. Even though the entire team began to clean up the space I still went up to the podium and presented my piece. I know only one person to me, but it didn't matter because I worked hard and I deserved to present.