1. Springboard- Activity 1.4
Exploring the Personal Narrative

2. Learning Targets
I can identify the components that provide the organizational structure of a personal narrative.
Incident, response, reflection
I can write a narrative that includes an incident, a response, and a reflection. #7

3. Entry/Notes Journal
In your entry/notes journal, please complete the following in your table of contents:
10-26 Activity 1.4 Vocab pg. _____

4. Narrative
Tells a story or describes a sequence of events in an incident

5. Re- Latin prefix meaning “back”
The Latin root flectere means “to bend”
When you reflect, you turn your thought back to think again about a subject or event.

6. Before Reading
1. Complete the graphic organizer below to explore your prior knowledge about personal narratives. You have read narratives in earlier grades. A personal narrative tells a story about something that happened in the writers’ life.

7. Exploring Personal Narratives
With what kinds of narrative texts are you familiar?
Biographies, short stories, novels, anecdotes, poems, graphic novels, films, autobiographies, etc.

8. Exploring Personal Narratives
What are some of your favorite narratives?
Explain what makes reading a narrative enjoyable?
Narratives tell an engaging story. They include an exciting plot, engaging characters, an intriguing setting, appropriate diction, and a relatable conflict.

9. Exploring Personal Narratives
What elements would you expect to find in a good story?
Plot, character, conflict, theme, setting, dialogue, descriptive details, transitions, an interesting hook, etc.
The narrative includes plot elements such as exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution
Beginning, middle, and end.
Incident, response, and reflection

10. Exploring a Narrative What is the purpose of a narrative?
To engage a reader with an entertaining story.
A personal narrative with reflection should engage the reader with a story based on real-life events. The purpose of reflections is to discuss why the incident was significant, and how it changed the author, what the author learned, etc.

11. Personal Narrative
A piece of writing that describes an incident and includes a personal response to and reflection on the incident.

12. Incident
A distinct piece of action as in an episode of a story or a play. More than one incident may make up an event.

13. Response
Your feelings and thoughts about people involved at the time

14. Reflection
A kind of thinking and writing which seriously explores the significance of an experience, idea, or observation.

15. Narrative vs. Personal Narrative
The incident, response, and reflection characterizes and differentiates a personal narrative from a narrative short story.
This also describes the organization of a personal narrative with reflection.

16. Grammar and Usage A dash is used: To mark a parenthetical thought.
To indicate an unfinished sentence.
To show an abrupt change in thought when a period is too strong and a comma is too weak.

17. Metacognitive Reading Markers

18. Mnemonic Device = SCWIFF
- SCWIFF Pronunciation: Sk-Whiff OR
- SC-WIFF Pronunciation: Es-See-Whiff

19. Key Idea & Details
Summarize the event leading up to the point when the narrator says “Just that quick I didn’t belong…”
Cindy is excited about playing on a baseball team. She doesn’t care that she is the worst one on the team; she feels she belongs, until the coach tells her to give her glove to another player.

20. After Reading
3. During class discussion, use the graphic organizer on the next page to take notes on the key parts of the personal narrative. Describe the incident in this selection. Find textual evidence to support your ideas. Remember you are using metacognitive markers to find evidence in the text.

21. Incident (what happened)
The narrator is asked to give up her glove to another player.

22. Response (your feelings and thoughts about people involved at the time)
She gives it up, but is disappointed, and the incident makes her feel bad.

23. Reflection (the lesson you learned from this experience)
The incident made her feel that she did not belong when she desperately wanted to belong to the team.

24. Reflection (how you will use this lesson in the future?)
I may think about how important and short-lived a feeling of belonging can be.

25. After Reading
4. Locate the narrator’s response to the incident. What does this say about her feelings? Use textual evidence (quote or paraphrase) to support your ideas.
The narrator gave the teammate her glove but she later felt disappointed about the situation. She knew that the coach saw her reaction to his demand, however, she handed it over. After that, the only thing she wanted to do was to be invisible and disappear. She even was upset with the boy that didn’t have a mitt and wanted his family to move away.

26. After Reading
5. Summarize the reflection in this selection. Looking back, how does the speaker understand the incident? How is the reflection different than the response? Find textual evidence to support your ideas.
The speaker understands that she was the worst one on the team, but she still felt a part of the team. When she had to give up the glove, it changed because she wasn’t like everyone else.
The reflection is different than the response because in the response she gives in to the demand. In the reflection, she realizes that she does not belong– something that she yearned for. She understands that even if her mitt isn’t taken, she still doesn’t belong because they could.

27. After reading
6. Have you thought of additional choices since the last activity? Add them to your “My Choices” graphic organizer.

28. 7. Select a choice and free write about it as a way to explore the topic. Be prepared to share in a collaborative group. Be sure to:
Explain the incident. (What was the choice? What took place when the choice presented itself?)
Fully discuss your response. (What did you choose? How did you react?)
Communicate your reflection. (What did you learn from this choice and its consequences?)

29. CYU
Write a definition for personal narrative, without looking at your notes.
A personal narrative is an autobiographical story, typically written from a first-person point of view, and usually written with an organizational structure of incident-response- reflection.