Personal narrative essay for middle school

For 8th grade, I had the same students, so I decided we would read The Outsiders. Even more so, instead of them just having to write from the point of view of a character, I actually wanted them to have to do some of that hard thinking that they might be missing out on by not doing a personal narrative.

Writing gods across the universe are gasping in shock, but it’s a decision I made a couple years ago, kind of on a whim, but has been the best thing I have ever done. WHY NOT PERSONAL NARRATIVES? I just feel like kids have written 8-10 personal narratives by the time they get to me, and we are all over it.

I found that when students have to use narrative elements to become a character from a narrative mentor text, they don’t spend days trying to figure out what to write. They truly use narrative craft because they have a complete and well done mentor text to constantly reference. Plus they’re final essay and their writing are just SO FREAKING GOOD.

We start by defining each of the elements but then look for examples in our mento texts. This is huge because they use their mentor text to write their essays. As someone who taught all three grade levels of middle school at the same time, I always needed different examples.