Video Lessons on Narrative Essay Revision on YouTube (FREE RESOURCE!)

Posted by Oct 9, 2023 Accessible ELA Lesson Plans, Differentiated Instruction to Address Behavior , , , , , , , ,

I’ve got upperclassmen enrolled in end-of-the-day ELA, and they are gone a LOT for activities. My class of 19 (already small) had 10 kids out due to activities last Friday, leaving me with nine kids. It was great because my co-teacher and I were really able to sit down with those kids and hammer out revisions on their summative personal narrative essays.

But…what about the other ten?

I could re-teach the entire lesson again during a seminar class, but that wouldn’t leave me any time for meeting with students who are struggling. I could meet with them 1:1 before or after school (not practical, and exhausting). OR…I could create a series of handy revision videos they could access to see what they had missed. Bonus: my kids with IEPs could watch the lesson all over again in Study Skills class as they revise. Yeah, I thought, let’s do that!

I wanted students to be able to see how a mediocre essay could evolve over time into a much stronger piece of writing. This four-part video series is FREE on myYouTube channel. I advise watching the videos sequentially to see the progression from the original “blah” essay to the pretty great one by the end of video #4. Videos only run 8-15 minutes, so they should be engaging enough for even distracted kids.

Topics covered are:

  • “Adding Details”–Anticipating and Answering Readers’ Questions
  • “Being More Descriptive”–Using Sensory Details and Figurative Language
  • “Show, Don’t Tell”–Using Clues to Allow the Reader to Infer Meaning
  • “Varying the Sentence Structure”–Using Dialogue to Break Up the Narrative

My own students said these were helpful, particularly because they show ONE STRATEGY at a time, using the same essay throughout. They said it made them feel like they actually knew what I wanted them to do when I told them to revise.

Check out the video series on YouTube. Like I said, it’s free…and it might improve your students’ narrative writing!

 

Keywords: personal narrative, personal narrative essay, secondary ELA, high school English, essay revision, accommodations, video lessons, enraged2engaged, ELA

 

About sara

I have spent the last 22 years in secondary classrooms. I've run the gamut from criminal, at-risk, or behavior-disordered students to college-bound high-flyers. I am just a regular teacher like you, who learned a lot of quality information the hard way. Currently, I work with students, families, and teachers to formulate effective and creative plans for helping students change problematic behaviors into productive ones as we work together to create success for students in general education high school ELA classes.
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