Third-Grade Photocard Project: Narrative Writing at Its Very Best!

It's one thing to read fictional stories. It's quite another to actually write your own fictional work as third graders soon found out during their recent reading unit, featuring narrative writing. However, as you will soon see, success was achieved, following a month's worth of hard work and the necessary literary instruction!

As part of this unit, students continued to pay due diligence to the importance of plot and its five primary elements, including the required rise in action en route to solving any story's central problem. At the same time, they also engaged in studying the different parts of speech and how those specific components then translated into actual word choices, especially with respect to description writing. The exact same sort of writing needed for this unit's own narrative writing Photocard Project.

In addition, students also learned the difference between "showing" verses "telling" when writing, and that it's almost always far better to "show" than it is to simply "tell". The importance of dialogue as a means of "showing" was examined, too, with demonstrations on the proper use and placement of quotes within their own work. Instruction was also provided with respect to the correct usage of quotation marks as well.

However, as is almost always the case, it was the study of figurative language that really grabbed and held the third-graders attention. Their fascination with any, and really all, of the seven forms of figurative language--simile, metaphor, personification, alliteration, hyperbole, idiom, and onomatopoeia--is clearly evident in terms of recognition when read but also, as you will soon see, within their own personal writing.

After scrolling through what once was a collection of old Christmas cards that have since been transported onto the iPad, each student was asked to choose a card that somehow inspired them in some way, shape, or form. They were then asked to write a narrative story centered around the picture on their given card of choice, making sure to use all of the points of study mentioned above. Not only were students able to gain a better understanding of the writing process itself, they were also able to acquire valuable first-hand working knowledge regarding the importance of the editing and rewriting processes as well. Once completed, each third-grader's work was then published using the Photocard app.