We made a collective list of things that seem to make personal narratives effective and powerful.
The students also wrote an on-demand personal narrative, which will serve as a baseline to judge progress over time. Since then, they have begun drafts of at least two other pieces. The ideas for these drafts came from two strategies for how to generate topics: think of a special person, and think of an important place.
Each time they write, students are pushing themselves to produce a page or a page and a half of writing. They set their own goals and will be expected to continue to push themselves forward bit by bit.
