Teacher Winnie guides students through planning a narrative story, starting with an orientation that introduces the protagonist, setting, and mood. The example follows Amber, a shy 10-year-old cheerleader, who gets a magical ring from her dad and enters a competition against a bullying teammate named Viviana. Students learn to map out complications, climax, resolution, and cliffhanger before writing.
Chapters
Hi everyone, this is Winnie or Miss Tang. Today we are learning to plan our writing. This is because we want to be prepared to write our narrative. Our success criteria today is to plan an orientation, so the beginning of the story, plan the 3 complications including the conflict and the climax of the story, plan the resolution, the ending, how you're going to resolve the complications, and we are also going to plan a cliffhanger. And we are going to put it all together into a story map, and it's going to look something like this. Now, before we start to plan, we need to gather some information. This is because we wanna be prepared to write our narrative. So we need to identify some information that we are going to need for our story. We have already come up with a main character who will grow throughout the story, and we have figured out the link and the message of the story. We have also figured out who our antagonist is going to be, the villain who causes chaos. We have We have also figured out who is going to help our character survive. So we've come up with the mentor, the allies, and the enemy characters for our story. We also have figured out the setting of the book, where it's going to be set in the town of Bubbleville, and we have come up with some words or a description to help our readers visualize the setting of our story. Now we are ready to plan. First up, we are going to have a look at our orientation because this is where we introduce the main character and give our readers a really good sense of what the story is going to be about, the setting, and it will also set the scene and the mood for our story. Well, first of all, our protagonist is Amber. She is a 10 to 11 year old girl, or in year 5, and she is a cheerleader. She's been doing cheerleading for a while since she was really little, and she also does some gymnastics. So I think Amber works really hard, but she's not really confident. She avoids wanting to admit when things aren't as they seem. So she tries really hard to be positive. So we figured out, um, in our previous videos that our antagonist is, um, another girl on the cheerleading team named, um, Viviana. Well, she seems really nice to everyone except for Amber, so she picks on Amber. Everyone seems to adore her, even the teachers. And what Viviana does is she will pick on Amber, but then she'll straight away try to compliment someone else to to cover it up? Well, we know that it is in a town called Bubbleville. I guess if they are doing cheerleading practice, then they're probably going to be in the school hall. I've also added in, um, Viviana picks on Amber and then straight away compliments someone else to cover it up. And because we've already written a description of our setting, I've just put in C, setting description. Next thing we are going to do is have a look at introducing the call to adventure. So with our character, for them to learn and grow, they need to out of their comfort zone. So a call to adventure is something, or the moment, when the main character is given a challenge, a quest, or a question, and it disrupts their normal life and invites them to do something new. Well, first of all, we know that Amber is on a cheerleading team. We know that Viviana picks on her. We could also give examples of how Viviana is also picking on her so that we can describe this in the story. And we know that if someone is being picked on, then they might um, lose self-esteem. They might question themselves. So the message of our story could be, since, um, Amber and Viviana are both on the cheerleading team, they could have a cheerleading coach who could announce that maybe because there's a cheerleading competition coming up, they need a cheerleading captain, someone who is a really good role model, someone who's hardworking, um, someone who's inspiring and brave. So maybe that could give Amber a bit of a push to go outside of her comfort zone. And we can have Viviana beaming really proudly because she, she thinks that she should be the one who should take that role. Well, we can have— maybe Mrs. Robinson could encourage Amber to go for cheerleading captain because she believes that Amber could be a good role model. Because Amber doesn't feel very confident, then she will probably decline that offer and not want to take up the challenge. Another thing we can add to our orientation is we can add in a mentor, someone who will help the protagonist along in their journey. So they might give them some knowledge or tools or abilities to help them through their challenges. And sometimes protagonists can refuse the challenge as well, so this is a good opportunity for our mentor to nudge them in the right direction and encourage them to take on the challenge. And it could also be a good opportunity in the beginning of the story to, um, do some foreshadowing. So some hints and clues of what could happen next. Uh, we've already figured out that the mentor for Amber is Rufus, her dad. They'll have a pretty close relationship and he will be the one who encourages her to go on this journey. Um, tool that, um, Rufus could give Amber could be maybe because Amber's parents were cheerleaders. Maybe her mom used to have a magic ring that, um, so we can sprinkle in some magic into the story. Maybe there's a magic ring that grants some wishes, and, um, these— and Amber might not know about this magic, or she might not believe that it's magic, and then she ends up making these wishes throughout the story. What I'm thinking is Viviana would have said some nasty things to her, so she doesn't tell her dad what she has said. Um, she tells him about the cheer captain position, and her dad encourages her to go for it. And then he, um, drops in some information that she didn't know. Her mum was a cheer captain. So we're in a situation where Amber— Amber's dad doesn't really talk much about her mum. Rufus shows Amber her mum's magic ring, a lucky ring that she wore at competition. Her dad tells her that it's magic, and Amber is skeptical because she doesn't really believe in magic. And he says that it has 3 wishes and for her to choose wisely. We're putting in a hint of magic in there, and we already figured out that Amber's not really gonna believe it, so she's just gonna unconsciously make these wishes, um, not knowing that her ring is actually magic, which then leads us to planning our complication. So our complication is where you come up with a problem or an obstacle for our main character to overcome, and it will disrupt their normal life, so they will feel uncomfortable. And if we find a way to create some suspense and tension during these complications, it will help our, um, audience connect with the characters that we are creating. And there you have it. So now it is your turn to plan your spectacular story. I have some templates here, and once they are ready, I will pop them in the link of the description below so that you can also use them to plan your story, to plan your orientation, your complications, and also your resolution and your cliffhanger. Up next. Can't wait to see you then. See you in my next video. Bye.
