Narrative Know-How

Teach your students to grasp the structure of narratives with this simple, yet powerful approach! 

Teaching text structure has never been easier or more engaging. Narrative Know-How: A Fresh Approach to Support Comprehension and Craft in the K–6 Classroom equips educators with innovative tools to help students understand the structure of stories, improving both their reading comprehension and their ability to craft compelling narratives. Through his unique Mood Structures strategy, Trevor Bryan offers a simple yet powerful way for students to connect with fiction and nonfiction texts alike. Whether you′re aiming to boost engagement, make complex ideas more accessible, or bring joy back to your literacy lessons, this book delivers.

Designed to help young readers and writers thrive, this resource focuses on actionable strategies and practical lessons tested in real classrooms. Teachers will gain the tools they need to develop students’ narrative comprehension, improve written expression, and foster critical thinking skills.

Offering a fresh approach to comprehension and narrative writing, this research-backed book

• Provides a proven instructional sequence that connects reading and writing to enable students to seamlessly build comprehension and composition skills

• Addresses key narrative elements such as mood, symbolism, and themes in both reading and writing through 20 classroom-tested lessons

• Helps students understand narrative principles with more than 20 extensive mentor texts examples and accompanying deconstructions

• Includes original illustrations from the award-winning author-illustrator, Jarrett Lerner, visual tools, graphic organizers and guided response sheets that enhance engagement and make the approach easy to access for every learner

Trevor Bryan’s groundbreaking instructional strategies make literacy instruction purposeful, practical, and fun. With Narrative Know-How, educators will inspire their students to think critically, write skillfully, and read with deeper insight.

Trevor Bryan loves stories. He has been exploring them for decades. Through this exploration, Trevor has forged some unique insights that help students to read and write. These insights have led to collaborations with the Princeton University Art Museum, author and illustrator Jarrett Lerner, and best-selling author and illustrator Peter H. Reynolds and his education company FableVision Learning. Trevor has been an art teacher in New Jersey for over 25 years. His first book, The Art of Comprehension: Exploring Visual Texts to Foster Comprehension, Conversation and Confidence, was published in 2019 by Stenhouse Publishers. Trevor enthusiastically presents and shares his work with teachers and schools throughout the country whenever he gets the chance.