How to Teach the 4 Types of Writing: Narrative, Informative, Persuasive, and Descriptive

You tell your students they’re going to write an informative paragraph—and several immediately ask, "What does informative mean again?" Teaching the four types of writing can be especially helpful at the beginning of the school year. Introducing these terms early prevents confusion and gives students a foundation you can refer back to during future reading and writing lessons. 

Four Types of Writing

Narrative Writing

Narrative writing tells a story. It typically includes characters, a setting, events, and a sequence. Encourage students to ask themselves: “Will I be writing about something that happened to me... or about something that could happen to a character?”

Informative Writing

Informative writing teaches the reader about a topic or explains something. It often includes facts. Students can ask: “Will I be trying to teach the reading something?”

Persuasive Writing

Persuasive writing attempts to convince the reader. It typically includes opinion words. Encourage students to ask themselves: “Will I be trying to convince the reader to do something... or to think the way I think?”

Descriptive Writing

Descriptive writing uses details to help the reader clearly imagine a person, place, object, or experience. It often contains many adjectives. Students can ask: “Will I be trying to describe something in a way that helps the reader picture it clearly?”

Connecting Writing to Reading

One of the best ways to help students understand different types of writing is to let them see plenty of examples.

• What clues tell us that a passage is narrative?
• How is an informative paragraph different from a persuasive one?
• What makes a piece of writing descriptive?

Giving students opportunities to read, compare, discuss, and classify examples helps make these abstract writing terms much more concrete.

It also encourages students to think about an author’s purpose and notice the choices writers make—which can ultimately help them make more intentional choices in their own writing.

Aspects that Often Confuse Students

Point of Confusion: Students sometimes see facts and then automatically assume that it is an informative piece of writing. 

Solution: Show students sample paragraphs that contain facts, but are persuasive, description, or narrative. For example, persuasive pieces often use facts as evidence to support their argument. A persuasive piece might be written to try to convince kids to limit how much soda they drink. In this piece, a good writer would point out facts to support their argument- like how drinking too much soda is known to lead to a higher number of cavities and dehydration.

Point of Confusion: Students might be confused between descriptive pieces and narrative pieces that use a lot of description.

Solution: Remind students that descriptive pieces are usually focused on a singular topic, like the beach. In contrast, a narrative piece contains characters, events, and ongoing action. Furthermore, strong narrative pieces will contain plot elements (the exposition/introduction, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the resolution).

A Ready-to-Go Resource

Want to teach all four without creating the examples and practice passages yourself? I have already created a constructed-response presentation with examples and practice for my own students. It is part of a small Type of Writing bundle that includes posters, a worksheet, an interactive notebook option, and a 2-day lesson plan. Click on the link below to take a closer look at it in my TPT store.

As you can see by the example slides shown below, I used soccer players and goals to try to hook my sports-loving students. It includes TEN sample paragraphs to analyze.

Narrative. Informative. Persuasive. Descriptive. 

Give your students the tools they need to tell the difference—and a writing vocabulary they can use all year long. ✏️

~Deb

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Restating the Question Using Jokes... plus some go-to resources!

Every teacher has a handful of “building block” lessons—those foundational lessons we teach during the first few weeks of school because they establish routines and expectations for the year ahead.

One of my go-to building block lessons is teaching students how to restate the question in their answer. From day one, I want my students to understand that one-word answers usually aren't enough, especially when responding to questions about a story or informational passage. Instead, I teach them to answer in complete sentences by incorporating part of the question into their response.

A Helpful (and FUN!) Way to Practice This Skill

Once your students understand how to restate a question, try practicing with jokes! Kids love the anticipation of hearing the punchline, and they're highly motivated to write their answers correctly.

Here's how it works:

Tell students the beginning of a joke that starts with a question, but don't reveal the punchline. Instead, have students write the beginning of their answer by restating the question. Once everyone has written their response starter, share the punchline so they can complete the sentence.

 

For example:

Teacher: What do bees chew?

Students write: Bees chew ____________________.

Teacher reveals: ...bumblegum!

 

Another favorite is:

Teacher: Why is Cinderella bad at soccer?

Students write: Cinderella is bad at soccer because ____________________.

Teacher reveals: ...she runs away from the ball!

 

You might also want to do one where the answer is best placed in the middle of the sentence rather than at the end:

Teacher: Where do cows go for entertainment?

Students write: Cows go to ____________________ for entertainment.

Teacher reveals: ...to the moooooo-vies!

 I especially like including examples like this because they show students that restating doesn't always mean putting the answer at the very end. They have to think about how to turn the question into a sentence that actually sounds natural.

It's a quick and engaging activity, gets everyone involved, and gives students meaningful practice with restating questions—all while sharing a few laughs.

A Ready-to-Go Resource

Several years ago, I created a PowerPoint lesson to explicitly teach this constructed-response skill, and a set of worksheets for student practice. It has become one of my most popular back-to-school resources. One teacher shared this review:

"I use this resource at the beginning of every school year to explicitly teach restating questions in complete sentences."

If you're looking for a simple, effective way to establish this expectation from the very beginning, I invite you to take a look. Just click on the image below to learn more! (I recently updated it so that it now includes a link to a Google Slides version of the presentation, along with six practice worksheets.) 

Restating the question may seem like a small skill, but it’s one of those building blocks students will use all year long. Taking the time to teach it explicitly—and giving students plenty of opportunities to practice—helps set the expectation for thoughtful, complete responses from the very beginning.

And if a few silly jokes can help make that practice more memorable, even better! 😊

~ Deb

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Teaching Rounding Through Number Lines

How many times have you heard a student say, 'Because 5 means round up' when asked to explain their thinking?" If you're an elementary teacher who teaches math, rounding is probably one of the skills on your checklist. In my experience, it's not always the easiest concept for students to master. While many students can memorize a rounding rule, truly understanding why a number rounds up or down is often more challenging.   One simple tool can make a big difference: the number line.   When we use number lines to teach rounding, we help students visualize the process and develop a deeper understanding of why numbers round the way they do. Instead of relying solely on a rule, students learn to think about which benchmark number a given number is closest to.   Moving Beyond "5 or More, Raise the Score" Many students learn catchy rhymes or procedures for rounding, but these shortcuts can sometimes lead to misconceptions. Students may know which digit to look at, yet still struggle to explain their reasoning. When rounding is taught only as a rule to memorize, students often have difficulty applying the concept to larger numbers, decimals, or estimation problems.   The Power of the Number Line A number line provides a visual model that helps students see rounding as a process of finding the nearest benchmark number.   For example, when rounding 47 to the nearest ten, students can place 47 on a number line between 40 and 50. Once they identify the midpoint (45), they can see that 47 is closer to 50 than to 40. This visual approach helps students understand that rounding is based on proximity—not just a rule to follow.   Benefits of Using Number Lines When students regularly use number lines to round numbers, they: Develop stronger number sense. Gain a better understanding of benchmark numbers. Build reasoning and justification skills. Strengthen connections between estimation and place value. Reduce common rounding misconceptions. Ready-to-Go Resources If you're looking for ready-to-use resources to support your rounding instruction, feel free to explore the materials in my store. Simply click on any of the images below to learn more about these activities and see how they can help your students build confidence with rounding. Worksheets and task cards are also available for more practice!

Below, you will see a few example slides from this 82-slide math presentation. I use ninjas to make this concept more engaging for students. I have found that students enjoy deciding whether a ninja needs to kick a number up to the larger benchmark number, or if the ninja needs to kick a number down to the smaller benchmark number.  It includes rounding numbers to the nearest hundred and nearest thousand, as well. Worksheets and task cards are also available for more practice! P

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Thanks for reading!

~Deb

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Teaching Upper Elementary Students to Decipher the Theme of a Story

Teaching upper elementary students how to infer the theme(s) of a book or a story can be daunting. This is a challenging topic for many students because it involves higher-level thinking skills. Providing scaffolds, like guiding questions and clue patterns, can be helpful for many students. Today, I am going to provide some tips that will hopefully help you teach students to decipher the theme. 

Tip #1: Connect this topic to a plot diagram.

Explain that authors leave clues that point toward the theme throughout the story. It is the job of the reader to recognize these clues when they are presented. If you have already introduced your students to plot diagrams, then showing your students a diagram like this can be beneficial.

Tip #2: Teach students clue patterns and guiding questions.

It's one thing to know that clues exist throughout the story, but it's another thing to recognize these clues while reading. Therefore, it is a good idea to teach students common patterns that authors use when they are dropping hints about their story's theme. Here are four patterns that occur frequently in books written for upper elementary readers. Below each type of clue, you will see a question that will guide your students toward deciphering the theme.

(The images shown above were taken from my "Themes in Reading" PowerPoint lesson.)

Tip #3: Read aloud a picture book and MODEL the process of deciphering the theme.

Any time I have the opportunity to model a reading skill by using a picture book, I jump at the opportunity! I love to integrate a good picture book into my lessons. If you are a fellow fan of using picture books to model reading skills (or you think you want to try it!), I invite you to download this book companion worksheet that I created to help students learn how to interpret the theme of a story. (Just click on the image to download it for free!)

Picture books written by Patricia Polacco are perfect for a reading lesson where you are modeling for students how to infer the theme. Below, you will see how you and your students might fill out this sheet after reading My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother to them.

If you are interested in having your students further explore the topics presented in this blog post, you should check out my brand-new "Themes in Reading PowerPoint"! I am super excited about this PowerPoint, as it has been percolating in the back of my mind for several years, and I finally buckled down and created it!

Have a great day!

Deb

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Teaching ELA Content through these Teach-and-Task Lessons!

Have you ever felt bogged down with keeping all of the components of your upcoming lessons organized? I know I often did! I would have piles for each lesson. The pile might include a book I was planning to reference, a few papers or posters that I was going to display using the document camera, and of course, a set of clipped worksheets that would allow for independent practice.

I created a new line of ELA resources that could help reduce the number of stacks on your desk. They are paperless and compatible with Google Slides. I have been calling them my "teach-and-task lessons" because each lesson includes instructional slides and matching activities to follow up the content that you have just taught. I have teach-and-task lessons for twelve important ELA topics. (All of the topics are listed near the end of this post.) Let me show you how they are structured by sharing images and explanations from my main idea set. 

Main Idea Lesson #2: Teaching Slides (Slides 1-7)

The first two slides are used to introduce the ice cream cone graphic organizer. 

Next, students watch as you guide them through reading a passage, identifying the main idea, and writing it in the cone section of the graphic organizer. The speech bubbles make it so that the answers are right on the slides for you, and you (as the teacher) don't have to try to come up with the main idea while you are teaching.

After identifying the main idea, you and your students can reread the passage, and view the important details that support the main idea sentence. When you advance to the seventh slide, they will see how the details have been added to the graphic organizer. 

Main Idea Lesson #2: Task Slides (Slides 8-11)

After working through the teaching slides, now it is the students' turn to practice with these two practice passages. They read the passages and fill out the graphic organizers independently. (The yellow boxes are text boxes.) If they want to refer to the teaching slides, they are readily available for easy reference.

This is just one of the lessons in my main idea set. Teachers who purchase the main idea set will receive four lessons. The lessons advance from basic content to more complex. You can use these lessons over the course of four days to provide lots of targeted main idea instruction to your students.

A Complete List of Topics

As I mentioned earlier, I currently have lessons like this for twelve ELA topics! Click on the links below to view each topic.

• ​Text Evidence: Four Digital Lessons​
• ​Main Idea: Four Digital Lessons​
• ​Making Inferences: Four Digital Lessons​
• ​Figurative Language: Seven Digital Lessons​
• ​Plot Elements: Four Digital Lessons​
• ​Context Clues: Four Digital Lessons​
• ​Themes in Reading: Four Digital Lessons​
• ​Author's Purpose: Four Digital Lessons​
• ​Cause and Effect: Four Digital Lessons​
• ​Summarizing Nonfiction: Four Digital Lessons​
• ​Summarizing Fiction: Four Digital Lessons

I hope you enjoy using these teach-and-task lessons as much as I enjoyed creating them! 

Deb 

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Leave a Comment 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, ELA, Freebie, test prep

Types of Sentences: A Free Sorting Activity

I frequently create sorting activities to use with my students. I am a huge fan of sorts for two main reasons. Most importantly, sorting activities require students to be actively engaged. When done with a partner, they involve many discussion opportunities, which is music to this ELL teacher's ears! I also like sorting activities because they are so versatile. Sorting activities can be an independent activity, a small group activity, or they can be easily adapted to create a whole-class activity, depending upon your current needs. In this blog post, I am sharing my types of sentences sort with you, and explaining how I have used it in a whole-class setting. I invite you to click on the image below to access it (it's free!), and decide for yourself how you want to use it with your students.

Add caption

I designed this sorting activity to be part of a review lesson, done one or two days after the four types of sentences have been introduced. (I almost always introduce a new topic of study with a PowerPoint.) Click on the following image to view my Types of Sentences PowerPoint.

Step 1: Preparation

Before class, there are just a few items that need to be prepared. First, the four posters need to be printed and glued onto manila envelopes. (As you can see, my envelopes happen to be white.) The sentence strips also need to be printed and cut apart.

Step 2: The Lesson

To begin the lesson, I ask students to turn to a neighbor and exchange interrogative sentences. Then, I display the interrogative poster (which is glued to an envelope) by placing it on the chalk tray, and we review what we already learned yesterday about an interrogative sentence's punctuation.

I repeat this step with declarative sentences, imperative sentences, and exclamatory sentences. When this quick review is complete, all four envelopes are lined up across the chalk tray.

Now, it is time to sort the sentence strips. I tell students to take out their personal whiteboard, eraser, and marker. When everybody is ready, I pick up a strip and read it to the class. Each student writes what type of sentence it is on their marker board. (I let them use abbreviations- D, Intg, Imp, and E.) Using my popsicle sticks, I randomly choose a student to share their answer with the class. I invite the student to come forward, add the correct punctuation to the strip, and drop it in the appropriate envelope. This process is repeated with all 27 strips.

I hope you and your students enjoy this lesson! If you happen to be looking for additional activities, feel free to check out my Types of Sentences Bundle!

-Deb

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Leave a Comment 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, Freebie, Grammar, Student Engagement

Text Evidence: A Lesson for Upper Elementary Students

Text Evidence... it's of huge importance in the upper elementary grades! After all, it's the first standard listed for Reading: Literature and Reading: Informational Text in grades 3, 4, and 5. For those of you who work with the Common Core standards, 4th and 5th grade students are expected to be able to answer text questions by pointing to a section of the text...

    1.)  that provides the exact answer

and 
2.) that helps them to infer an answer

I created the following lesson to use with upper elementary students. If you would like to replicate the lesson to use with your own students, click on the image below. You can download all of the printables shown in this blog post for free!

Part 1: Anchor Chart

Prior to the start of the lesson, assemble the top half of the anchor chart so that it is ready to go when class begins. (Do not include the questions or answers shown at the bottom of the anchor chart.)

To begin the lesson with students, point to the anchor chart title, and then discuss what the dot dude characters are thinking. Ask a student volunteer to read the paragraph aloud for the rest of the class. Tell students that two questions follow this text. Read the first question to the students and ask them whether it is a "right-here-in-the-text" question or an "infer-with-text-clues" question. Write the question on the correct side of the anchor chart, and then have students help you answer the question. Repeat the process with the second question.

Part 2: Introduce Sentence Starters 

After you complete the anchor chart, pass out the bookmark papers to your students, and tell them that the two types of questions require slightly different sentence starters. 

The set of five sentence starters on the left is useful when the answer is explicitly stated in the text. The set of five sentence starters displayed on the right is especially valuable when students must infer in order to determine the answer. 

Tell students to cut around the outside box and then fold it in half to create a two-sided bookmark. This bookmark can now be used as a reference tool throughout your text evidence unit, and throughout the school year.

Part 3: Practice with a Partner

For the final part of this large group lesson, have students work with a partner. To begin, tell them to quickly decide which of them is Partner A, and which is Partner B. Hand each group a dry-erase board, marker, and eraser. 
1.  Place "The Cobra" passage under your document camera and invite the groups to read it quietly

     to themselves. (I recommend covering the questions for now.)

2.  Tell students that for this passage, Partner A will write on the clipboard while Partner B will 

     handle the bookmarks. 
3.  Display Question #1.
4.  Tell partners to discuss whether it is a "right-there" question or a "stop-and-infer" question and 

     then answer the question.
5.  Partner A should write the answer on the whiteboard. (Students must use one of the sentence 

     starters from the bookmark, as well.)
6.  When all of the groups are done, have them display their answers. Partner A should hold up the 

     whiteboard, and Partner B should hold up the bookmark so that the question type that they

     identified is facing you.
7.  Display Question #2 and repeat steps 4-6.
8.  Display Question #3 and repeat steps 4-6.

When you have completed the first passage, place the second passage under the document camera and repeat the entire process outlined above. Instruct the partners to switch roles for this new passage. Partner B is now the writer while Partner A is in charge of handling the bookmarks.

TEXT EVIDENCE... MORE PRACTICE OPPORTUNITIES!

In case you are interested, I have created a number of Text Evidence teaching resources that are available in my TpT store. Just click on the images to take a closer look at them!

Thank you for stopping by!
~Deb

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5 comments 3rd grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, Freebie, reading, test prep