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Corbett Harrison's Website



Dena Harrison's Website


Holly Young's Website

Listen Up!
Music in the Writing Classroom
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Rob Stone's Ning

Learning Is Messy
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Brian Crosby's
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NWP's Website

Writing Genres: Our Narrative & Memoir Workshop
lessons, resources, and ideas from one of the NNWP's teacher in-service classes

Every year, the Northern Nevada Writing Project--sponsors of this WritingFix website--presents an inservice course for the teachers of Northern Nevada on the topic of narrative and memoir writing. Most of the ideas and resources presented during this 16-hour workshop are featured on this page so that teachers from everywhere can learn about what we're doing in Northern Nevada.

Why a class specifically on narrative and memoir? In Nevada, our fifth graders take a writing examination, and their writing is assessed using four of the six writing traits: idea development, organization, voice, and conventions. The prompts given to the fifth graders are narrative in nature, and students are asked to reflect on experiences from their pasts. We believe that if all our elementary teachers created powerful lessons and thorough units inspired by the narrative genre, their students would automatically do better on their tests. Our inservice course was designed to help attending teachers design powerful lessons on narrative and memoir.

In our class, each teacher participant receives a complimentary copy of two Ralph Fletcher books: the instructional and student-friendly How to Write Your Life Story as well as Fletcher's own autobiography Marshfield Dreams: When I Was a Kid. These mentor texts are used to guide our teacher participants as they created their own short memoir to share with their students.

The Mentor Text of the Year Program

Our Narrative Worksop's Focus Trait

WritingFix proudly features an annual program called the Mentor Text of the Year Program. For the 2009-2010 school year, we chose the books we distribute during this inservice class as Mentor Texts of the Year. All year long, we invite teachers from all over to share ideas on using these books with student writers.

To access the Mentor Text of the Year Homepage, click here.

Our genre-inspired workshops include discussion topics on all of the six writing traits, but with each class we offer we try to focus in on one. With narrative and memoir writing, our natural focus becomes idea development.

To access our Idea Development Homepage, click here.

The Heart Map Activity
for narrative writing topics
Click here to read how to inspire narrative writing.

A Newly Posted Activity:


Click here to access this teacher-submitted idea.


Follow WritingFix on Twitter! You'll know when new resources are posted. Click here.

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WritingFix Lessons Presented at our Narrative & Memoir Inservice Class

Lesson: Memories that Inspire your own Moment Like This Memoir

Mentor Text: Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli

Focus Trait: Word Choice
Support Trait: Idea Development

Presenter: Amy Hybarger, Northern Nevada middle school teacher and NNWP Consultant

Lesson: Showing How to Deal with Anger

Mentor Text: When Sophie Gets Angry--Really, Really Angry... by Molly Bang

Focus Trait: Idea Development
Support Trait: Voice

Presenter: Karen McGee, Northern Nevada kindergarten teacher (retired) and NNWP Consultant
Click on the lesson's title or the image thumbnail to read an overview and to access the entire lesson and its resources, including student samples and graphic organizers.

Lesson: Summertime-inspired Memoirs

Mentor Text: Summertime (various renditions) from the Opera Porgy and Bess

Focus Trait: Voice
Support Trait: Word Choice

Presenter: Amy Richards, Northern Nevada fourth grade teacher and NNWP Consultant

Lesson: Reshaping Narrative Writing as Poetry

Mentor Text: Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes

Focus Trait: Idea Development
Support Trait: Word Choice

Presenter: Dena Harrison, Northern Nevada middle school teacher and NNWP Consultant
Click on the lesson's title or the lesson image to read an overview and to access the entire lesson and its resources, including student samples and graphic organizers.

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Five Narrative Resources from the NNWP's
Elementary & Secondary Writing Guides

A Narrative Lesson found in the NNWP's
Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Print Guide

During the 1990's, Teacher Consultants from the Northern Nevada Writing Project worked together to create two wonderful print guides for teachers: The Elementary Writing Guide and The Secondary Writing Guide. Both guides shared resources and ideas on three big topics: the writing process, the writing traits, and the writing genres. The Washoe County School District generously agreed to print thousands of copies of these resources to distribute among every teacher in Northern Nevada's largest county.

In 2000 and 2004, both guides underwent revisions to align them with Nevada's new state standards, and again the Washoe County School District paid for the printing so that all Northern Nevada teachers could have access to these excellent resources. In 2007, the both guides were printed for the last time. The rising price of paper inspired the NNWP to began posting the EWG and the SWG's narrative-improving resources on-line here at WritingFix.

Narrative Tools from the E.W.G.:

Narrative Tools from the S.W.G.:

In 2005, Teacher Consultants from the Northern Nevada Writing Project worked together to create the NNWP's fifth print guide for teachers: The Going Deep with 6 Trait Language Guide. This guide is used by PLCs and during all of the NNWP's trait-based inservice classes for teachers. In 2006, we started selling this guide outside of Northern Nevada, and we now proudly boast that thousands of copies have been sent to teachers all over the country and world. Proceeds from those sales fund future growth here at the WritingFix website.

In our trait guide's Organization Section, we found a narrative lesson from NNWP Consultant and Co-Director, Carol Gebhardt. The lesson below teaches a powerful lesson about brainstorming interesting questions as a means to pre-plan a narrative's paragraphs before you actually writing a first draft. We hope you are inspired by this complimentary lesson from Carol. If you'd like information on how to purchase the entire 196-page guide, click here.

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Teacher-Made Reviews & Activity Ideas for Memoir/Narrative "Mentor Texts"

One activity we do in our narrative/memoir inservice is have our participants write reviews for mentor texts from their classrooms that they use when teaching their students about the narrative genre. With each review, teachers also write-up an activity they do with the text to get their students thinking about writing their own narratives or memoirs. Click the images below to access the teachers' reviews and activity suggestions.

Marshfield Dreams
by Ralph Fletcher

Activity Suggestion:
Written Snapshots
in Memoir

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Granny Torrelli Makes Soup
by Sharon Creech

Activity Suggestion:
Memoirs about
Food and Kitchens

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Looking Back
by Lois Lowry

Activity Suggestion:
Memoirs about
Photographs & Pictures

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Bad Boy: A Memoir
by Walter Dean Myers

Activity Suggestion:
Memoirs about
Telling Lies that Hurt

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Cookies: Bite-Sized Life Lessons
by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Activity Suggestion:
Learning Social Vocabulary while Launching a Memoir

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

A Christmas Memory
by Truman Capote

Activity Suggestion:
Christmas Memories with a
Special Relative

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Would I Ever Lie to You?
by Caralyn Buehner

Activity Suggestion:
A Memoir Inspired by
Three Truths and a Lie

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

My Life in Dog Years
by Gary Paulsen

Activity Suggestion:
Memories from a Pet or
Object's Point of View

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexander

Activity Suggestion:
Unofficial Rule Lists
to Launch a Memoir

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid
by Jeff Kinney

Activity Suggestion:
Stong Memoirs Inspired by
a Wimpy Diary

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Knots in My Yo-yo String
by Jerry Spinelli

Activity Suggestion:
Childhood Artifacts
to Inspire Memoir

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Guys Write for Guys Read
edited by Jon Scieszka

Activity Suggestion:
A Menu of
Memoir Choices

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Leaving Home with a Pickle Jar
by Barbara Dugan

Activity Suggestion:
Memoirs about
Moving Away

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

When I Was Little
by Jamie Lee Curtis

Activity Suggestion:
Sparking a Memoir
by Comparing Now to Then

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Thank-You, Mr. Falker
by Patricia Polacco

Activity Suggestion:
A Letter and Memoir
about a Teacher

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

When I Was Your Age
edited by Amy Ehrlich

Activity Suggestion:
Memoirs with
Strong Word Choices

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Home to Medicine Mountain
by Chiori Santiago

Activity Suggestion:
Memoirs about
Faraway Schools

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Boy: Tales of Childhood
by Roald Dahl

Activity Suggestion:
Visualizing Memorable Details
for a Memoir

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros

Activity Suggestion:
Visualizing Memorable Details
for a Memoir

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)

Marley and Me
by John Grogan

Activity Suggestion:
Memories Sorted
on a Timeline

(Click the blue link or the book cover to read this activity suggestion.)


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More Narrative Resources from Classrooms:

The Mr. Borilla Project

An Mnemonic Device:

We saw this graphic on the wall in the classroom of NNWP Teacher Consultant Amy Maniscalco. The five parts of a narrative are represented by the five fingers of this giant green hand. Students can use such a graphic as a mnemonic device for the parts of a narrative.

Memoir Class Presenter, Corbett Harrison, believes that teachers teaching the narrative genre should share plenty of memoirs that they have written about their own lives. Teachers' brainstorms, rough drafts, second drafts, and final drafts should be ready to go on the overhead projector as students are creating their own narratives.

This is a scary notion for many teachers. There are too many educators out there who have never shared their own writing with their students.

As his part of our inservice class, Corbett has teachers brainstorm, then write short memoirs about teachers from their own pasts who made a tremendous impact on them as lifelong learners. By the final night of the inservice, participants have short memoirs that have gone through the entire writing process, and these narratives can be shared with their students.

As participants go through this writing process, Corbett models his own process. When participants have a completed draft, Corbett has them post their final drafts at a blog he sponsors: The Mr. Borilla Project.

Michael (Mike) Borilla was Corbett's fourth and fifth grade teacher, and as Corbett tells the story, he was the teacher who indirectly convinced him to become an educator himself. Mike Borilla was a colorful character who demanded the best from his pupils at Bullard Elementary in Fresno, California. Corbett had been telling stories about Mr. Borilla to students for years when he learned that Mr. Borilla has passed away in 2007. Sending Mr. Borilla a letter that thanked him for his influence had always been one of Corbett's goals, so when he learned his teacher was gone, Corbett established The Mr. Borilla Project as an on-line forum where teachers could share short memoirs about their most influential teachers.

Up for the challenge, teachers? If you write a short memoir about your most influential teacher and want to post it among ours (as well as among others from around the country), click here and paste/type your story into the "Leave a Comment" box at the bottom of the page!

Here are some of the resources Corbett shares as he guides teachers in the inservice class through the process of writing these memoirs:

  • E-mail to class participants (sent two weeks prior to class starting in order to help them start pre-writing)
  • Questions to Leads Activity (used on the first night of class to help teachers craft the perfect introduction to their narratives)
  • Revision Sprint (used on night #3 to challenge participants to consider some final revision strategies before posting their final drafts on night #4)
  • 10-Word Memoir Activity (once the final draft is posted on night #4, participants transform their story into a 10-Word Memoir, which is a thematic synopsis of the whole story)

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