Le personnage, une entrée pour l'écriture du récit à l'école primaire

Teaching how to tell a story at school is focused on the “narrative pattern”, which seems to be the final solution to the children' s writing problems at school. Yet, but if is a delusive solution as its scope is extremely restricted and as the ways in which if is taught dangerously reduce the genre. The more ambitious attempts only arrive at a loose set of activities as if the narrative technique was nothing but the sum total of sub-techniques. We hold as founding principle that the character is the most natural introductory means into the narrative technique and that, as a highly unifying concept, it links together the majority of the writing-problems met by children. That principle leads us into suggesting a definition of the character that can work in the class-room. And from this definition, we infer a model of the narrative construction focused on the character highlighting the complex interwining of the operations to be completed to carry out the task, and, as a consequence, the complex interwining of the competences to be developed. From the network thus drawn and the problems the children come upon, a teaching programme is suggested (illustrated in the present case through the example of the description) aiming at coherence and cohesiveness but not covering up for difficulties.