How to Write an Essay: What is a Narrative Essay? by Teach Simple

About this resource

What's inside this resource

A 'Chapter Slice' excerpted from Classroom Complete Press's 'How to Write an Essay' workbook focuses specifically on the narrative essay, guiding grades 5-8 students (rated at a 3rd-4th grade reading level) through the five-step writing process using a 'mind movie' framing device that asks students to picture their story as if describing it to a friend. Reproducible pages include a Before You Read vocabulary-and-terms activity, an action-verb identification exercise, a reading passage explaining narrative technique (state-of-being verbs versus action verbs, showing versus telling), an After You Read Skeleton Plan graphic organizer and narrative-prompt identification task, six open-ended writing prompts spanning narrative, persuasive, informative, and descriptive purposes, a crossword and word search built from key vocabulary, and a multi-part comprehension quiz. A full Bloom's-Taxonomy-aligned answer key ('Easy Marking Answer Key') is provided for every scored activity, along with a teacher guide explaining the resource's picture-cue page system and an assessment rubric for evaluating student writing. The file's copyright and permission-to-reproduce notice restricts use to the single individual teacher who purchased one copy, for that teacher's own classroom only, which is worth confirming against the catalogue's subscription/download model.

What's included

Critical Thinking Skills chart (Bloom's Taxonomy) and Writing Assessment Rubric
Teacher Guide explaining the resource's page-type system
Before You Read vocabulary/terms activity plus action-verb identification exercise
Reading Passage: 'What is a Narrative Essay?' (5-step writing process, action vs. state-of-being verbs, showing vs. telling)
After You Read: Skeleton Plan graphic organizer and narrative-prompt identification task
6 open-ended writing tasks (narrative, persuasive, informative, descriptive purposes)
Crossword and word search built from unit vocabulary
Multi-part Comprehension Quiz (short answer, true/false, essay-type identification, adjective circling)
5 additional graphic organizers: Concept Map, Expository Pillar, Descriptive Essay Organizer, Gathering Grid, Persuasive Essay Organizer, Story Map
Full 'Easy Marking' answer key for all scored activities

Resource types: Teacher Tools, Lesson Plans, Graphic Organizers, Quizzes, Crosswords Puzzles, Word Searches

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Identify the defining features of a narrative essay, including chronological order, action verbs, and sensory details.
Distinguish action verbs from 'state-of-being' verbs and explain why action verbs make writing more engaging.
Plan a narrative essay using a Skeleton Plan graphic organizer that sequences an experience's key events.
Classify writing prompts by essay type (narrative, persuasive, informative, descriptive).
Apply the five-step writing process (prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading, publishing) to an original narrative essay.

Teaching tips

Use the Assessment Rubric (page 4) to evaluate the six open-ended writing tasks, since it scores ideas, organization, style, and conventions on a 4-point scale.
Assign the Comprehension Quiz as either a follow-up review or a formal end-of-unit assessment, as the teacher guide suggests both uses.
Model the 'mind movie' technique from the reading passage before assigning writing tasks, since it's the resource's central strategy for teaching descriptive, sequential storytelling.
Confirm your licensing terms before distributing to multiple classrooms or colleagues, since the file's own permission notice restricts reproduction to the single purchasing teacher's classroom.

Skills covered

Narrative structure — students sequence an experience's events chronologically using a Skeleton Plan graphic organizer.
Action-verb usage — students identify and circle action verbs in sentences and are taught to minimize 'state-of-being' verbs like is/was/were.
Essay-type classification — students sort writing prompts and vocabulary into narrative, persuasive, informative, and descriptive categories.
Vocabulary application — students complete a crossword and word search using terms like prewriting, drafting, revising, and thesis.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

This 'Chapter Slice' focuses on the narrative essay, but it also includes graphic organizers for persuasive, descriptive, and informative essays — are those extra or off-topic?

They're bonus reference organizers rather than off-topic: the comprehension quiz itself asks students to classify prompts across all four essay types, so the persuasive, descriptive, and informative organizers extend that classification skill into planning tools, even though the core reading passage and writing tasks center on narrative writing.

The file's permission notice says reproduction is limited to 'the individual teacher who purchases one copy' for their own classroom — does that affect how this can be used if downloaded through a subscription service?

It's worth confirming: the printed permission notice is written for a single-copy purchase model (one teacher, one classroom, no sharing with colleagues or a whole school), so how that aligns with a multi-download subscription catalogue is a licensing question rather than something this excerpt itself resolves.

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Curriculum

Standards, concepts & topics

Standards

CCSS.W.7.3 — Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences. a. Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically. b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters. c. Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another. d. Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events. e. Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.
CCSS.W.8.3 — Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences. a. Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and point of view and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically. b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, and reflection, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters. c. Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence, signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another, and show the relationships among experiences and events. d. Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to capture the action and convey experiences and events. e. Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on the narrated experiences or events.
CCSS.W.6.3 — Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, relevant descriptive details, and well-structured event sequences. a. Engage and orient the reader by establishing a context and introducing a narrator and/or characters; organize an event sequence that unfolds naturally and logically. b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, and description, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters. c. Use a variety of transition words, phrases, and clauses to convey sequence and signal shifts from one time frame or setting to another. d. Use precise words and phrases, relevant descriptive details, and sensory language to convey experiences and events. e. Provide a conclusion that follows from the narrated experiences or events.