Writing

 Personal Narrative and Memoir

 Writers of personal narrative and memoir share stories from their lives that are significant. During this unit students will explore how authors share personal stories and  help readers be in the moment with them through their craft and choice in words. They will consider what the point of their story is and how they will make this clear to their readers.  They will look closely at how they as the central character can create stories that capture the heart and imagination of readers. look back in time to make sense of a prior experience and, through reflection, bring meaning to the memories in their writing. 

Key questions:

• How does the writing process support writers to create texts with meaning?

• How does the planning and organisation of a personal narrative/memoir help writers create meaningful stories?

• What details might writers select to develop a setting in a personal narrative?

• How does a writer’s word choice create images for readers?

• How does sentence length and structure support communication?

Eleven, by Sandra Cisneros

What they don’t understand about birthdays and what they never tell you, is that when you’re eleven, you’re also ten and nine and eight and seven and six and five and four and three and two and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven but you don’t. You open your eyes and everything is just like yesterday, only it’s today. And you don’t feel eleven at all. You feel like you’re still ten. And you are- underneath the year that makes you eleven. Like some days you might say something stupid and that’s the part of you that still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mamma’s lap because you’re scared and that’s the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you’re all grown up, maybe you’ll need to cry like if you’re three and that’s okay. That’s what I tell mamma when she’s sad and needs to cry. Maybe she’s feeling three.

In this extract, the author of this memoir begins to recall how reaching birthday milestones don't always bring the extra year of maturity, wisdom, strength or confidence that everyone expects when you get older. What should be a perfect day can feel like something else altogether.

This is clearly somewhat autobiographical and means that a memoir, which is a type of personal narrative, reveals events from the writer's life of which they can say, "This mattered to me. It meant something."

Next unit... Poetry