Draw Then Tell: Personal Narrative

Language · Grades 4–6 · 8 cards · about 20 min

Draw a real event, then tell it as a complete narrative with orientation, complication and resolution.

Draw the best part of your weekend. Then tell it as a story with a beginning, middle and end.

What's in this activity

  • Draw the best part of your weekend. Then tell it as a story with a beginning, middle and end.
  • Draw a time something went wrong. What was the problem, and how did it end?
  • Draw a place you know well. Now take me on a tour of it out loud.
  • Draw a person who matters to you. Tell me one story about them.
  • Draw something you learned to do. Explain the steps in the order you learned them.
  • Draw a time you were surprised. Tell me what you had expected instead.
  • Draw your last day off. Tell the story in five sentences, no more.
  • Draw one moment from a game or a performance. Describe it like a sportscaster.

About this activity

Eight prompts that ask for a drawing and then a story: draw the best part of your weekend and tell it with a beginning, middle and end; draw a time something went wrong — what was the problem and how did it end; draw a time you were surprised and tell me what you had expected instead. Personal narrative is what a student is asked for constantly outside school, and it has the same structure as the fiction they are graded on.

How to use it in a session

Insist on the shape rather than the length. The went wrong prompt is the most useful because it forces a complication, which is the element most students leave out — a story where nothing goes wrong is a description of a day. The five-sentence prompt is a good constraint for a student who tells everything at once; the sportscaster one suits a student who tells too little. Twenty minutes covers one narrative with a retell.

What to listen for

Listen for the internal response. Students reliably give the setting and the events, and the part that goes missing is how the character — themselves — felt about it, which is what makes a sequence into a story. Watch the surprise prompt, which requires stating an expectation that turned out wrong, and is the hardest inference-adjacent task in the set.

Carrying it home

Dinner conversation is personal narrative. Asking for the best and worst part of the day, with a beginning and an end, is a routine some families already have and is exactly this task.

Questions

What grades is this for?
Fourth through sixth, and the prompts scale up easily for older students.
Do I need an account?
No, all eight prompts are free to use here.
Why personal narrative rather than retelling a story?
Because the student owns the content, so all the effort goes into the structure. A retell tests memory as well as narrative; a personal story tests only the structure.