A Writing Teacher’s Guide to Personal Narrative Writing

You guys. I am so excited about this. More excited than I’ve been about a project in a long time.

I’m currently teaching It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime for the first time. And, to save time and energy and maximize learning, I’m using it as the foundation of my personal essay unit.

Which made me think: what if there were teacher’s guides (like the teacher’s guides you find online with discussion questions + comprehension activities) for writing.

And thus I began a little experiment: could I write a writing teacher’s guide to It’s Trevor Noah: Born A Crime? So I wrote one — 17-pages of activities, mini-lessons, and 40+ mini-mentors texts to teach personal narrative writing.

Here’s what you’ll get:

• 3 ideas for narrative products students can create in this unit
• A structure for every writing lesson you’ll ever teach
• An activity for personal narrative idea generation
• 7 writing mini-lessons for personal narrative writing
• 40 mini-mentor texts from It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime

“But I don’t teach Born a Crime…”

Here’s what makes me the happiest about this guide: it’s for anyone who teaches personal narrative. You can use it at any one of three levels:

I’m hosting a webinar to walk through a unit of personal narrative writing and my new ebook! We’ll chat about how to use this guide, and what it might look like in your plan book and classroom — whether your students are reading It’s Trevor Noah: Born a Crime or not! We’ll also have time for Q&A about teaching narrative writing.

Every participant will receive a copy of the ebook with your webinar registration! Or you can buy the ebook by itself! (Members of the Moving Writers Community receive both free!)

The webinar will be recorded and sent to participants the next day! I hope to see you there as we move through personal narrative writing together!