Junior School

Narrative Writing in Year 2 

Article by Prue Haggerty, Year 2 Leader

During Term 3, students worked on developing their narrative writing skills, learning to create engaging stories that capture the reader’s attention and keep them interested. They explored how authors use descriptive language, interesting characters, detailed settings and carefully planned story structures to bring their ideas to life.

A key focus was understanding the beginning, middle and end of a narrative and the important role each section plays in telling a successful story. Students learnt that the beginning introduces the characters and setting, helping the reader understand who the story is about and where it takes place. The middle develops the storyline by introducing a problem or challenge that the characters must face. Students explored ways to build suspense and keep readers wondering what might happen next. The ending then brings the story to a satisfying conclusion by showing how the problem is solved or the events are resolved.

Students also worked on expanding their ideas and choosing language carefully to make their writing more interesting. Rather than simply telling the reader what happened, they have practiced adding detail through adjectives, descriptive phrases and specific vocabulary. These techniques help readers picture the characters, imagine the setting and connect with the events of the story. They also explored how dialogue, action and descriptive details can reveal a character’s feelings and reactions, making stories more engaging.

Another important part of the learning was considering the purpose and audience of a narrative. Students were encouraged to think about who might read their story and how they can keep that reader interested. They learnt that effective writers make deliberate choices about the information they include, ensuring that each section contributes to the storyline rather than adding unnecessary details.

Finally, students continued to develop their editing and revising skills. They practiced rereading their work to check that their ideas make sense, their sentences flow smoothly and their punctuation, spelling and grammar are accurate. They also learnt the importance of making changes to improve their writing, whether that means adding more description, clarifying an idea or strengthening an ending.

Throughout the term, students were building their confidence as storytellers and learning that strong narrative writing involves more than simply putting ideas on paper. By planning carefully, developing characters and problems, choosing descriptive language and editing thoughtfully, they learnt to create stories that are clear, imaginative and enjoyable to read.

Some thoughts shared by Year 2 students about their Narrative Writing Journey

Spencer - I enjoyed writing narratives because I could use my imagination and create a narrative that characters that I wanted in the story and adventures that I chose for them to go on. I loved publishing my final story and drawing the pictures as my story came to life. I felt proud of my book.

Archie - Narratives were fun do as a writing subject because we got to write our own books and every week we wrote a different story. It was really fun to see how the story was going each time we wrote. I loved publishing my book. It was one of the best bits because we got to write and illustrate our story and now, they are hanging on the wall in our classroom for everyone to read.

Georgiana - I liked writing Narratives and choosing what the problem was because then when I re read it sounded like a fun story to read and not just boring. I also liked doing the brainstorming because I like getting all my ideas out to make the story. I got to choose the characters and their names, ages and the setting. 

Raelle – I enjoyed that you got to use your imagination to create a narrative from the beginning to the end.  I enjoyed making up characters and including my friends as characters in books.

Julian – I liked that we could do some creativity and that we could do some stuff that we wanted, write what we wanted to write about. 

Ivy - I liked that I got to use my own imagination. It made me love writing and being creative. I loved every story that I wrote, I couldn't choose a favourite! My favourite thing was sharing and reading my story to my friends and having fun listening the their stories as well.