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ELA 5: Personal Narratives 765 Views
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Description:
A personal narrative is a true story about yourself. That's right, it can't be about the time you fought twelve ninjas in a spaceship while riding a T-Rex. Bummer huh?
Transcript
- 00:04
[Coop and Dino singing]
- 00:13
You've probably written about all sorts of things at one point or another:
- 00:17
a book you read, history, maybe dinosaurs... [Soldiers firing guns]
- 00:20
That's all well and good, but in a personal narrative, you're not writing about any of
- 00:23
those things. …Unless you’re a dinosaur. [Dinosaur sat at a desk]
Full Transcript
- 00:26
In a personal narrative, you’re writing about the very best subject in the world:
- 00:30
yourself! A personal narrative is a true story of something [Coop explaining a personal narrative]
- 00:33
that happened to you, which is nice, because you’re pretty much an expert on yourself.
- 00:37
In a lot of ways, a personal narrative works just like any other narrative. It has dialogue,
- 00:41
descriptive details, and follows the structure of Freytag's Pyramid. [Dino explaining details of personal narratives]
- 00:44
And guess what? You probably tell personal narratives every day. Anytime you tell a story
- 00:49
to your friends about something that happened in your life, it's probably chock-full of
- 00:52
dialogue and packed with descriptive details. [People riding on a train]
- 00:54
So the next time you get in trouble in class for telling a story about your life, just
- 00:57
tell your teacher that you're practicing the art of the personal narrative.
- 01:01
One tip for writing personal narratives is to start with a hook. Try to think of an interesting [Coop discussing the hook]
- 01:05
piece of dialogue, a descriptive detail, or a cool way to describe the setting.
- 01:09
You want to be sure that you start your story off with a bang.
- 01:13
Well…not an actual bang. Unless your story happened on a battlefield, [Soldiers firing guns on a battlefield]
- 01:16
which we’re guessing it probably didn’t.
- 01:18
And, quick tip: just because your life story goes all the way back to when you were a baby,
- 01:22
that doesn't mean it's always a very good place to start.
- 01:24
You've had a lifetime of cool experiences
- 01:26
to choose from, so pick one of your favorites and try to write a personal narrative of your own! [Selection of personal narrative topics]
- 01:30
The stories of your life might be old news to you, but if you write them up well, they
- 01:34
can be just as interesting as anything out there...
- 01:37
…especially if you’re a dinosaur. [Girl reading a book and Dinosaur appears beside her]
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