Writing Historical Narratives guides your students step by step through the process of writing about a real or imagined event that took place at a time in history. Instructions, activities, examples, videos, interactives, and downloads help students gain new writing strategies and skills. You can also present this unit right from your interactive whiteboard.
Students begin by imagining a conversation with a person from history, such as a president, or a Civil War nurse, or a laborer in a factory. Students then read a sample historical narrative. After responding to the reading, students are ready to write their own historical narratives:
- Prewriting activities help students think about people, places, events, and time periods in history. Students choose a topic, research it, and gather details to use in writing the narrative.
- Writing activities help students write a beginning that introduces the people, setting, and events. Students then develop a middle part that uses action and dialogue to show what happened in the narrative. An ending paragraph brings the historical narrative to a strong close.
- Revising activities help students add dialogue, check point of view, get a peer review, and use a checklist to make improvements.
- Editing activities help students use specific nouns, vivid verbs, and colorful adjectives, as well as correctly formatting and punctuating dialogue.
- Publishing activities help students create a clean final copy of their historical narratives and reflect on what they have learned.