Notes on Literacy Narratives

   

You become a writer by writing. There is no other way.

This week, we are starting the literacy narrative project, and as you start exploring the path you wish to take I'm thinking there's a few things I could share with you to make your journey more enjoyable. 

There are many ways to write a literacy narrative, and these are just a few of them:

Memories

One easy way to think about writing a literacy narrative is to create an inventory of moments or memories that you feel are relevant to the story you are trying to tell. If I were to write a story about how I learned to parent kids on the Autism Spectrum, I might spend a few minutes writing a list of important moments I'd like to share with my readers. The first one would probably be the day I was told they were on the spectrum. As a student suggested in class recently, I could open my narrative with a description of the room we were in, what I saw, heard, what I was feeling, etc. and go from there. In this case, vivid description will be a tool you can use to create a sensory experience for your readers. 

To get started, you can write a list of 5-10 things you remember, opening each line with "I remember...." That can lead to a timeline of events you will use in your story.

Literacy Sponsors

Literacy narratives are often about the people who have taught us something important. That sponsor could be a soccer coach, if you are writing about your soccer literacy, or a reading teacher, if you are writing about how you learned to read, or a mental health counselor if your story is about mental health literacy. More often than not, our family members are also our literacy sponsors, so perhaps your story will focus on how your Mom or your Dad or a sibling taught you to do X. 

If you take the literacy sponsor route, character development will be a good friend to you. Your readers will want to see that sponsor, so you can describe them as you saw them. You can show us what they did (actions), what they said (dialogue or quotes) to teach you meaningful lessons.

To get started, you can write a detailed description of the person who you would call a literacy sponsor. 

Community Literacy Narratives

As many of you pointed out, this is another possible path for writing a literacy narrative. In this case, the community is your literacy sponsor, so you'll want to make the community a character of sorts. You could, for example, describe your first time interacting with this community as a novice, how lost you felt. Then you could move on to scenes or memories of important moments as an active member of the community that helped you become more confident and knowledgeable--helping you move from novice to a more experienced member of the community. 

If you take this route, I highly recommend doing a bit of research on "discourse communities" and "communities of practice." 

Then you can focus on writing a story about that community and what you've learned from it.

To get started, you can open with the moment you became part of that community. Maybe you were born into it, or maybe a friend dragged you into cheerleading auditions and that's how you discovered this community. See what I mean? 

It's really not rocket science. Anybody can write a literacy narrative.

Now it's your turn to try.

Thanks for writing!

Tania







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