Narrative Writing Intervention Plan: Analysis of Students’ Literacy Learning Needs

Abstract

Our conversations with friends, family and others, either by talking or writing, are in form of narrative. It is incontestable that narrative is a very important skill because basically our life is a narrative. However, telling narrative in a written form is often challenging for young people to do. Different conventions, such as spelling, grammar, and text structure, in writing require specific skills to encode spoken language and experiences into written language. The focus of this project is to target grade 5 and 6 students’ narrative writing skills. Specifically, it focuses on finding out whether the disengaged writers are reluctant writers or struggling ones. The intervention project limits the focus of the assessments on students’ attitude towards writing and students’ selection and use of ideas to write a narrative piece. Nonetheless, assessments include students’ narrative writing skills and the narrative features of their writings even though it would not be the main focus. A preliminary assessment was conducted to provide an insight why they are disengaged in writing narrative. Students were taught to understand narrative writing convention and were provided with several strategies to improve their narrative writing skills. Students work samples were collected and were analysed based on First Steps Writing Developmental Continuum (1997), Culham’s Traits Scoring Guide (2009) and NAPLAN Writing Narrative Marking Guide (2010). These diagnostic tools gave clear map of students’ capacity to organize a narrative, to include the reader, to build up ideas and to develop characters and settings. The project results teaching plans to escalate students’ confidence in writing narrative and to develop an awareness of narrative features and structure. It also finds that a supportive learning environment is the key for students’learning.