In order to teach writing, it is important to understand the three writing genres, or writing text types. They are narrative, informative/explanatory, and opinion/persuasive writing and within each text type there are subtle nuances that, if you know them, make each one easier to teach.
NARRATIVE WRITING
Narrative writing is widely considered the easiest genre to teach simply because it is the type of writing that students have the most experience with when starting school. The majority of students that walk through your classroom door on the first day of school have spent years listening to stories being told and read aloud, as well as watching narratives play out on shows, cartoons, and movies. All of this makes narrative writing the most approachable of the three genres.
So, when students begin learning how to write at school, it makes sense to start with narrative writing. It is a style of writing that often centers around the writer (at least in the beginning stages) and since children are ego-centric in nature, narrative writing allows students to put themselves at the center of the action causing narrative writing to be more interesting for them and; therefore, the most actionable.
As students get older, narrative writing becomes a bit trickier. Gone are the days of simply detailing a trip to the zoo. Narrative writing is no longer centered around the writer as the main character. It now requires a young writer to see the story through another’s perspective—a main character that is not them.
Students are also asked to empathize with another’s person or character's point of view, predict their behavior as the story progresses, and then imagine how those actions will influence the other characters in the story. Furthermore, the writing expands to include figurative language, dialogue, dynamic characters that move in coordination toward a common end goal, AND that end goal is now supposed to highlight an important theme, or lesson, that their reader needs to understand.
INFORMATIVE/EXPLANATORY WRITING
Informative/explanatory writing is thought to be the most straight-forward of the three writing text types and rivals narrative as one of the easier genres to teach and it's easy to see why. Students love to share the things they know, so informative writing appeals to the “teacher” inside each of them. Sharing new information with a friend gives kiddos a sense of pride making informative writing the “feel-good” writing genre.
Informative writing also taps into the innate sense of curiosity about the world that children naturally have. As a result, this writing genre comes with a built-in excitement that makes students want to write. In other words, it is easy to get student's to buy-in to writing tasks which tends to make teaching this genre more enjoyable for teachers and kids.
Explanatory writing takes informative writing to a deeper level. The shift to this more complex version of informational writing usually happens in upper elementary school when students are better able to understand the process of teaching (rather than telling) their reader about a topic. The difference between informative and explanatory is subtle but significant.
Being able to construct sentences that state facts is very different than detailing the process of how to complete a task, solve a word problem in math, or explain a scientific phenomenon. Understanding this shift is a game-changer for teachers teaching this style of writing, as well as for the students.
OPINION/PERSUASIVE WRITING
The third, and often scariest, type of writing to teach is opinion/persuasive. It is difficult because it is messy. It isn’t straight-forward or easy to explain and requires divergent thinking; something that most of our students aren’t used to doing or plain don't know how to do.
Children are usually given directions—clean their room, brush their teeth, go to bed at 7:30pm, wear your seatbelt, line-up for recess, etc. But, kids are rarely asked their opinion so it makes sense that when students are all of the sudden supposed to have an opinion about, for example, school lunches versus lunches from home, they don’t know what to say. Lunches (in this example) just exist for them. Most of the time children don’t know that there is a choice between the two options let alone that they are allowed to make judgements on the merits of each one.
As a teacher teaching opinion/persuasive writing, it is important to understand this little bit of psychology, so you can explicitly teach what it means to first have an opinion, then how to persuade someone to agree OR why someone might disagree with your opinion (and why disagreeing is okay….but that’s another can of worms for another day).
Now that you understand the basics of all three writing text types, it's time to start teaching. Begin with whichever genre speaks to you and then branch out as you get more comfortable. No one, including your students, expects you to be an expert right out of the starting gate. The key is to decide to just give it a go.
Remember, tiny steps forward are still steps in the right direction. You’ll find your stride as you get more practice.
Happy writing, my friends,
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