Stage 1 Writing: Narrative
Term:3
Weeks: 1 – 6
Social Purpose
Narratives construct a pattern of events with a problematic and/or unexpected outcome that entertains and
instructs the reader or listener. Narratives entertain because they deal with the unusual and unexpected
development of events. They instruct because they teach readers and listeners that problems should be
confronted, and attempts made to resolve them. Narratives incorporate patterns of behaviour that are
generally highly valued.
Structure
Narratives are usually organised to include:
 Orientation — this stage ‘alerts’ the listener and/or reader to what is to follow, usually by introducing the
main character/s in a setting of time and place.
 Complication — in this stage a sequence of events, which may begin in a usual pattern, is disrupted or
changed in some way so that the pattern of events becomes a problem for one or more of the characters, eg a
visit to a deserted house becomes a serious problem for the
narrator when he finds himself locked in a house where there is no handle to the door. The events are evaluated
by the character/s, thus making it clear to the reader/listener that a crisis has developed, eg ‘I was terrified
when the door slammed shut. How was I going to get out? There was no handle on the inside and nobody knew
where I was. My heart was racing and I felt sick with fear as I banged on the door’.
 Resolution — the problem or the complication is resolved or attempted to be resolved in the resolution. A
pattern of normalcy is restored to the events, but the main character/s has changed as a consequence of the
experience.
Coda — this stage is optional. It makes explicit how the character/s has changed and what has been learned
from the experience.
ESL Scales Reading and Writing
ESL Scales levels: Beginning Reading and Responding 1, 2, 3; Reading and Responding 1; Beginning Writing 1, 2, 3; Writing 1.
 Make up simple true and false (yes and no) statements based on students’ narratives, eg The princess is a girl.
 Ask students to locate particular parts of the narrative or key words. Point out clues to support students.
 Focus on meaning of narrative; sequence main events of narrative using illustrations. Identify main characters.
ESL Scales levels: Reading and Responding 2, 3; Writing 2, 3
 Point out title, words, sentences, punctuation. Use this metalanguage regularly.
 Make speech bubbles next to characters to recycle vocabulary.
 Use students’ own transcripts of traditional stories and picture books. Often students are not willing to read and write words they
don’t know orally. Use these as a basis for sequencing and cloze activities to focus on meaning (eg content words including nouns and verbs).
 Discuss common synonyms in the text, eg big/huge.
 Build word banks of common action verbs, act out and link to particular narratives.
 Limit amount of new vocabulary in a session.
 Focus on use of plurals.
 Highlight reference chains (who is speaking in a narrative, eg he, Tom) as ESL learners often have difficulty tracking the character
being referred to.
 ESL students and teacher jointly rewrite a known narrative focusing on structure.
When paraphrasing, select language that supports everyday communication, eg cry for sob, run for bolt.



 Noun
 Adjective
Grammar Focus
Building up descriptions of characters in the orientation.
Using a variety of action verbs to develop the complication.
Using words that express the feelings and attitudes of characters.
Students at this stage will be using terms such as:
 verb
 adverb
 conjunction
 sentence
Content – Year 1
WS1.9
WS1.9
WS1.11
WS1.9
WS1.12
WS1.12
Producing Texts
• practise joint and independent constructions of a
variety of simple text types on familiar topics for a
known audience, personal experience,description of
familiar people or things
Skills and Strategies
• use a pro forma with headings as a basis for
writing simple texts
• read their own writing aloud to self-correct and
clarify meaning
• use illustrations with appropriate labels to support
texts
• build handwriting skills such as forming most
letters of the alphabet correctly and writing
clearly in straight lines from left to right using
letters of uniform size, shape and spacing
• develop computer skills, including knowledge of
letters on keyboard and words associated with
computers (eg keyboard, mouse, disk, screen,
cursor).
WS1.13
WS1.14
Context and Text
• encourage students to write a variety of simple
texts through modelling
• design joint and independent construction
activities, drawing students’ attention to the text
purpose and structure
• provide pro formas with guided questions to
scaffold students’ writing
• encourage students to think about what they know
about a topic before writing
• encourage students to identify a target audience
before writing
Language Structures and Features
• make explicit the organisational stages of literary
and factual texts
• discuss with students how adjectives are used to
provide more information about nouns
• talk with students about the punctuation needed
for their own writing
• model proofreading and editing, eg circle a word
that does not look right.
Content – Year 2
WS1.9
WS1.9
WS1.10
WS1.11
WS1.10
WS1.11
WS1.12
WS1.12
Producing Texts
• engage in joint and independent constructions of a
range of text types, eg recounts of personal
experience, descriptions of familiar people or
things, poems, elementary stories.
• respond to questions about their own writing from
a variety of audiences, eg teacher, family member,
classmates, older or younger students, teacher’s
aide, classroom visitor
• use headings to indicate topic of text
• use graphics to accompany text where relevant
Skills and Strategies
• prepare for writing, eg by planning text structure
into a framework such as a matrix, semantic map,
by taking notes from written texts
• use subject–verb and noun–pronoun agreement in
their own writing
• begin to proofread and edit their own texts for
publication
• use common punctuation, eg upper and lower case,
correct spacing, question mark, and experiment
with more advanced punctuation for different
effects
• spell high-frequency and common sight words
accurately and use knowledge of letter
combinations and blends when writing new words
• develop handwriting of consistent size and spacing
in NSW Foundation Style use computer software to
write texts.
WS1.13
WS1.14
Context and Text
• discuss and explain the purpose and audience of a
variety of simple literary and factual texts in books,
including media and electronic texts
• model how to select and organise information
before writing
• model how to consider purpose and audience before
writing
• provide proformas with guided questions to
scaffold students’ writing
Language Structures and Features
• discuss with students how adjectives are used to
provide more information about nouns
• assist students to identify verbs and verb groups
• provide opportunities for writing conferences to
support editing and proofreading
• point out clauses to students and explain their
purpose
• model strategies for ensuring the use of correct
spelling and punctuation in texts.
Stage 1
English
Writing
Term 3
Weeks 1 - 6
Outcomes
WS1.9
WS1.10
WS1.11
WS1.12
WS1.13
WS1.14
Teaching and Learning Experiences
Week 1: Identify Struture:

Indicators:
• writes stories with
some of the
organisational
structures and
language features of
narrative
• identifies the
purposes of the
different structural
parts of a narrative
• uses drawings to
accompany text
where relevant
• uses words that
evaluate characters
and events
Narratives

Jointly construct a scaffold for narratives using headings and questions for
each stage: Orientation — Who? When? Where? Complication — What goes
wrong? How do the characters feel about things going wrong?
Resolution — How is the problem solved?
Use Picture text sequence and label the parts. Use the PM Exemplar on
Narrative to innovate on a text. Jointly construct the Plan. Guide the
writing by offering suggestions.
Throughout the unit get those charts up!
Developing lists of relevant words or phrases in context for students to
copy from the blackboard or word bank charts. Adjectives, interesting
verbs, adverbs/adverbial phrases, time connectives, conjunctions.
Week 2, 3, 4 5:

Have students innovate and extend on one stage of a narrative text,
e.g. orientation, or complication, substituting own words for key words
in the model. Use the work sheets provided for your grade.

In pairs or small groups, create a story plan to use as the basis for writing
a narrative. Remember to model as a whole class first, using keywords
then have the students plan independently.

Locate action verbs in texts for a class word bank to use in writing
activities. Add to these to charts. Break them into saying, feeling, action
and being verbs (Year 2 ) must be able to identify these types of verbs.

Locate words expressing attitude and feeling for a word bank to use in
writing. See character worksheet on BLM 14 ‘Mixed feelings’

In pairs, sequencing events (written on cards) from a familiar narrative.

Completing sentences relating to a familiar class story focusing on changing
present tense verbs to regular past tense verbs.

Focus on the development of the complication in a narrative and how a
problem is constructed through a sequence of events that go wrong in some
way and cause a problem for the characters.
Week 6: Assessment week
 Year 1 Students
 Year 2 Students
They plan
plan and write a story using picture clues.
choose a story path from the large class chart.
then write their narrative.
Resources
PM Exemplar
Book 1 for year 1
Resource
worksheets for
grade.
PM Exemplar
Book 2
for year 2
Worksheets
specific to
grade.
Assessment
Look for 
and bold text
for possible
assessment
activities
Evaluation
Stage 1
Stage 1
Term 3
Outcomes
RS 1.5
RS 1.6
RS 1.7
RS 1.8
Indicators
• links personal
knowledge and
experience with
information and ideas
in narratives
• retells and comments
on narrative texts
viewed or read
• states an opinion and
supports it with
information from the
written text
• records events and
ideas from narratives
• locates problems and
attempts to resolve
them
• locates words
evaluating characters
and events
• focuses on how
orientation and
complication are
developed.
English
Talking & Listening
English
Weeks 1 - 6
Teaching and Learning Experiences
Reading
Narratives
Narratives
Resources
Idea 1:
 Read aloud the same narrative a number of times so that students
can listen for different aspects of structure and language in each
reading. Provide focus questions for listening.
Idea 2:
 Have students examine familiar narratives to locate events,
characters or actions that interest or entertain the reader. Link
these to the purpose of narrative to entertain and instruct.
Idea 3:
 In pairs, matching sentences on strips to a familiar class text.
Idea 4:
 Make predictions based on shared narrative texts, e.g. about
Assessment
Look for 
and bold text for
possible
Resources
content, next stage of story, next event, character response,
individual words, phrases, sounds, spellings, punctuation.
Idea 5:
 In shared reading, guided reading focus on how orientation and
complication are developed. Focus on action verbs in complication.
Idea 6:
 Cut up a short narrative text into sentence strips. Have
students sort the strips into three groups according to
whether they belong to the orientation, complication or
resolution. Divide the students into three groups to reconstruct
each stage of the narrative.
Idea 7:
 Look at the visual images in a text of each particular character.
Assessment
Look for 
and bold text for
possible
assessment
activities
Discuss the strategies used by an illustrator to shape readers’
perceptions, e.g. How is the character positioned in the picture?
Is the character looking directly at the viewer or not? What
effect does this have? Is the character looking up to the viewer
or down on the viewer? What effect does this have?
Idea 8:
 Building sentences using familiar words and phrases on cards, and
reading result aloud to group.
Idea 9:
 Delete adjectives from an unfamiliar narrative and ask small
groups to supply answers. Compare responses with original version,
as a whole class, considering different meanings created by
different choices.
Idea 10:
 Locate words that evaluate characters and events, eg It was a
terrifying experience, He seemed shy and nervous.
Idea 11:
 Presenting model sentences and identifying content elements,
e.g. who, what, where and when.
Idea 13:
 In pairs, building and illustrating noun groups with two or more
adjectives and an adjectival phrase or clause, based on a
familiar class text and using word banks in classroom.
Evaluation
Term 3
Outcomes
TS 1.1
TS 1.2
TS 1.3
TS 1.4
Indicators
• talks about stages of
narratives and their
purpose
• identifies some of the
needs of an audience
when listening to a story
• responds orally to
narrative texts heard or
read
• locates stages of
orientation, complication
and resolution in
narratives read aloud.
Weeks 1-6
Teaching and Learning Experiences
Idea 1:
 Listen to sections of a narrative being told or read aloud.
Identify which stage of the narrative (orientation,
complication, resolution), that has been heard, with reference
to details heard, eg It’s part of the orientation because it
introduces the characters.
Idea 2:
 Retell an orientation and/or a complication of a familiar
narrative.
Idea 3:
 Create a visual representation of a character, location or
scene in a narrative heard read aloud.
Idea 4:
 Recounting actions of main characters from simple familiar
texts to help students to ‘guess who’, e.g. Little Red Hen; The
Gingerbread Man.
Idea 5:
 Ask students to listen for patterns of sounds such as rhyme,
rhythm, repetition and alliteration in narratives.
Idea 6:
 Play description games where students are given the name
of a character from a familiar narrative. Students take it
in turns to add adjectives before the noun to build up noun
groups to describe different characters, eg the big, bad,
black, furry, mean wolf.
Idea 7:
 In groups, completing an oral cloze on a familiar text, e.g.
Three Little Pigs: the first little pig met a man with a load of
_____.
Idea 8:

Innovating on the story, changing character names, location,
e.g. Mrs Wishy-Washy
(Teacher’s name) washes ____ (other farm animals).
Resources
Assessment
Evaluation