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5 Keys To Writing A Narrative Essay: Tips For Middle School Students

Writing a narrative essay is easier and more fun that most essays, because it involves a story. Your middle school age child will be able to write this homework easily if they follow the five tips laid out in this article.

5 Tips for middle school narrative essays

  1. Get all the facts first.
  2. Organize them into several groups.
  3. Write out the main headings and subheadings.
  4. Shape them into an outline.
  5. Write the essay from the outline.

The outline will be like a flowchart your child can follow so they know what to write about in the next paragraphs. It makes it so much simpler for writing a narrative essay because a child with little experience writes better when there’s something to follow along with.

How to write an effective outline

Think of the outline as a tree with a few large branches. Each large branch has smaller ones growing out of it. These smaller branches are each connected with, or related to, one large branch. The outline should have main ideas with smaller ideas connected to them. All the smaller ideas work together to support the main idea.

When the student begins writing, it’s as simple as reading the headings on the outline, and expanding each one by writing about them. Each paragraph would be a main idea, and the sentences within that paragraph would be composed of the smaller ideas.

Characteristics of a winning paper

The paper should have good content, structure and mechanics. The student should express their thinking in an interesting, effective and organized manner. The content of the paper is a reflection of the writer’s message. The more specific it is, the more interesting. General writing tends to be a lot more boring.

The structure is how it’s organized. Having an introduction, main body and conclusion are essential components. A good introduction begins in a way that captures the reader’s attention. Then it leads into the thesis statement, if there is one. For middle school students, the thesis would be more of a statement that gives the purpose of the written paper.

Mechanics is the way language is used, including grammar, word usage, spelling and punctuation. Are the sentences interesting? Does the reader have to think a little bit? Are the words spelled properly? Is the grammar excellent? These are all parts of a great paper.