Personal Memoir Unit

The Common Core writing standards calls for students to write a narrative, both personal and fictional. We love bookending our year of writing with narratives. We start the year off with having our students write a personal memoir, and we end the school year with our students writing a fan fictional narrative. Both are super fun pieces of writing for students to work on, but both are equally very different.

For today’s blog post, let’s talk about teaching personal memoir. What is the difference between a personal narrative and a personal memoir? Well, a personal narrative recalls a significant event in a person’s life, whereas a personal memoir not only recalls a memory, but also reflects on the significance of that event in the person’s life. Writing a personal memoir is clearly the more challenging piece of writing, and one in which brings value and clarity to a person’s life.

We have taken our memoir writing unit and created activities and a presentation. You can find it in our Teachers Pay Teachers store. What we have created in this unit is a presentation (keynote, powerpoint, and PDF) to help guide you and your students through this memoir unit of writing. We also have group work activities to help develop under-story, seven mentor texts, outlines, student essay examples, and graphic organizers all designed to help all students be successful with this unit of writing. It is well worth your time to go check out our materials to help you design a writing unit of study that fits your students to a tee.

Happy teaching!