Question
Instructions
Narrative Prompt:
Write a narrative essay about a milestone on your path to growing up. In your story, be sure to introduce the characters and setting clearly, sequence the events to show how the milestone unfolded, include both actions and reflections (what you thought or felt), and conclude by explaining the lesson you learned and why it mattered in your growth.
My work
The Biggest - Jermany.odt
Attach
Upload from this device
No file chosen
New
Feedback
1. Introduction & Characters (15/20)
Strengths: Clear characters (Jermany and Jay Jay), situations (school project, basketball game, moving).
Needs Work: Because this is a personal narrative assignment, it should be written in first person (“I” statements). Writing in third person distances the reader from the experience. –3 point deduction here for not using first person.
2. Events & Organization (17/20)
Strengths: Nicely structured around three key life events: group project, basketball game, family move.
Needs Work: Could use more transitions to link events emotionally (“I felt ___ as I moved from this to that”).
3. Reflections & Lesson Learned (17/20)
Strengths: Ends with a clear reflection and lesson: communication, stepping out of comfort zone, adapting to change.
Needs Work: Would be stronger if written directly from Jermany’s own voice (“I learned…”) rather than a narrator describing it.
4. Narrative Details & Style (15/20)
Strengths: Includes a lot of specifics—basketball game at halftime, family moving, making a list of things to look forward to.
Needs Work: Missing sensory/emotional details that show rather than tell (“my stomach churned,” “the roar of the crowd”).
–2 points because third-person style blunts the emotional impact.
5. Conventions (15/20)
Strengths: Grammatically sound overall, good sentence variety.
Needs Work: Some minor issues with spacing (“experience Jermany felt”) and missing periods at the end of a couple of lines.
Overall Score: 79/100
Points
No points
Narrative Prompt:
Write a narrative essay about a milestone on your path to growing up. In your story, be sure to introduce the characters and setting clearly, sequence the events to show how the milestone unfolded, include both actions and reflections (what you thought or felt), and conclude by explaining the lesson you learned and why it mattered in your growth.
My work
The Biggest - Jermany.odt
Attach
Upload from this device
No file chosen
New
Feedback
1. Introduction & Characters (15/20)
Strengths: Clear characters (Jermany and Jay Jay), situations (school project, basketball game, moving).
Needs Work: Because this is a personal narrative assignment, it should be written in first person (“I” statements). Writing in third person distances the reader from the experience. –3 point deduction here for not using first person.
2. Events & Organization (17/20)
Strengths: Nicely structured around three key life events: group project, basketball game, family move.
Needs Work: Could use more transitions to link events emotionally (“I felt ___ as I moved from this to that”).
3. Reflections & Lesson Learned (17/20)
Strengths: Ends with a clear reflection and lesson: communication, stepping out of comfort zone, adapting to change.
Needs Work: Would be stronger if written directly from Jermany’s own voice (“I learned…”) rather than a narrator describing it.
4. Narrative Details & Style (15/20)
Strengths: Includes a lot of specifics—basketball game at halftime, family moving, making a list of things to look forward to.
Needs Work: Missing sensory/emotional details that show rather than tell (“my stomach churned,” “the roar of the crowd”).
–2 points because third-person style blunts the emotional impact.
5. Conventions (15/20)
Strengths: Grammatically sound overall, good sentence variety.
Needs Work: Some minor issues with spacing (“experience Jermany felt”) and missing periods at the end of a couple of lines.
Overall Score: 79/100
Points
No points
Answers
GPT-5 mini
Below is a revised first-person narrative that keeps your three key events (group project, basketball game, family move), adds sensory and emotional detail, uses clear transitions, and ends with a direct reflection on the lesson learned. After the story I list the specific changes I made so you can show how this revision addresses your teacher’s feedback.
The Biggest Step
The first time I realized growing up would mean choosing discomfort over comfort, I was fourteen and sure I knew how things were supposed to go. My name is Jermany. My best friend Jay Jay sat beside me in Mr. Morales’s class, always cracking jokes, always able to make the class laugh. At home my parents had routines that kept everything predictable. I liked predictable. Then three different things happened in one school year—a group project, a cracked gym floor and halftime, and the day we packed up our house—that together taught me how to step forward even when my knees felt weak.
It started with the group project. Mr. Morales assigned a leadership unit and paired me with Jay Jay and two quieter kids, Maya and Luis. I wanted to take charge, assign tasks, and get it over with. My stomach twisted the first meeting when Jay Jay and I realized the others weren’t speaking up. I could feel the fluorescent lights buzz above us, the scratch of pencils. Part of me wanted to do the whole thing myself so it would be done right. Instead, I remembered something my mom always said—“Listen twice as much as you talk”—and I forced myself to ask questions: “What part do you like?” “Tell me how you’d present this idea.” At first the answers were small, shy, like whispers in a hallway. Then Maya’s eyes lit up and she sketched an idea on the back of a worksheet. Luis offered to build the poster. Jay Jay and I adjusted; I learned to hand over control. We presented as a team. The applause felt different that day—less like mine, more like everyone’s. I felt proud in a new way, like pride wrapped in relief: we had succeeded together because I had stepped back enough to let others step forward.
Next came the basketball game. Our team was down by two at halftime and the crowd in the gym was louder than a thunderstorm in my chest. The floor smelled like sweat and polish, and the squeak of shoes was constant. Coach pulled me aside and told me I’d be playing the second half. My palms dampened; my mind replayed every clumsy move I’d made in practice. I wanted to hide on the bench. Jay Jay clapped me on the back and said, “You got this.” That small push felt like a shove off a cliff—terrifying but inevitable. I ran onto the court, and for the first few minutes every noise seemed too sharp: the referee’s whistle, the buzz of the scoreboard, the crowd’s breath held in unison. Then something loosened. I made a pass that led to a score. I missed a shot, but someone else grabbed the rebound. By the end we won by one point. Walking off the court, adrenaline was still humming in my veins, but so was a quiet confidence. I had shown up under pressure. I had been scared and still performed. That’s different from pretending fear isn’t there—it’s acting anyway.
The last test was the hardest: packing our life into boxes and moving three towns over. I remember the cardboard smell and the hollow echo of empty rooms as my family folded sheets and stacked dishes. My mother made a list of what to look forward to; my father kept the truck steady. I wanted to cling to the old house like a child clutching a blanket. On the last night I sat on the steps of the porch and felt time compress—photos, backyard games, the hum of the streetlight that had been my night companion. Jay Jay came by one last time to say goodbye. “You’ll make new spots to sit,” he said, giving me the same look he did after that game—part joke, part serious. I learned to trust that people and experiences could be replaced by new versions, not erased. The moving day was a slow grief and a strange excitement all at once: I felt loss for what I left and curiosity about what I would become in a new place.
Putting these moments together, I realized the pattern. Each milestone asked me to leave a small, comfortable island and step into something uncertain: to listen instead of lead when it mattered, to enter a noisy gym rather than hide, to close a door on the past and open another. Fear didn’t disappear in any of those moments. What changed was my willingness to act despite it. That willingness made me more reliable, more open, and more alive to what other people could bring into my life.
The lesson mattered because it turned “the biggest” into a series of smaller choices. Growing up wasn’t one large event that hit me all at once. It was the accumulation of decisions—asking a teammate for their idea, taking a breath before running on the court, packing the last box and walking away—that reshaped who I was. Now, when I stand at the edge of something uncomfortable, I think back to Mr. Morales’s classroom, to the squeaky gym floor, to the empty kitchen, and I tell myself: I can do one small brave thing. That’s how you grow.
What I changed and why
- Voice: Rewrote entirely in first person (addresses the –3 point deduction and teacher’s note to use “I”).
- Transitions: Added linking phrases and reflection after each event to show emotional continuity.
- Sensory/emotional detail: Included smells, sounds, physical sensations (stomach twist, palms damp) to “show” emotions rather than just tell them.
- Reflections: After each scene I added explicit personal thoughts/feelings and a final paragraph tying the events to a clear lesson.
- Conventions: Cleaned punctuation and sentence endings; check for spacing issues and missing periods in your final document.
If you want, I can:
- Shorten or expand this to match your required length.
- Edit it to match a specific grade-level tone or word-count.
- Insert direct quotes from Jay Jay or family members from your original draft if you paste parts of it here.
The Biggest Step
The first time I realized growing up would mean choosing discomfort over comfort, I was fourteen and sure I knew how things were supposed to go. My name is Jermany. My best friend Jay Jay sat beside me in Mr. Morales’s class, always cracking jokes, always able to make the class laugh. At home my parents had routines that kept everything predictable. I liked predictable. Then three different things happened in one school year—a group project, a cracked gym floor and halftime, and the day we packed up our house—that together taught me how to step forward even when my knees felt weak.
It started with the group project. Mr. Morales assigned a leadership unit and paired me with Jay Jay and two quieter kids, Maya and Luis. I wanted to take charge, assign tasks, and get it over with. My stomach twisted the first meeting when Jay Jay and I realized the others weren’t speaking up. I could feel the fluorescent lights buzz above us, the scratch of pencils. Part of me wanted to do the whole thing myself so it would be done right. Instead, I remembered something my mom always said—“Listen twice as much as you talk”—and I forced myself to ask questions: “What part do you like?” “Tell me how you’d present this idea.” At first the answers were small, shy, like whispers in a hallway. Then Maya’s eyes lit up and she sketched an idea on the back of a worksheet. Luis offered to build the poster. Jay Jay and I adjusted; I learned to hand over control. We presented as a team. The applause felt different that day—less like mine, more like everyone’s. I felt proud in a new way, like pride wrapped in relief: we had succeeded together because I had stepped back enough to let others step forward.
Next came the basketball game. Our team was down by two at halftime and the crowd in the gym was louder than a thunderstorm in my chest. The floor smelled like sweat and polish, and the squeak of shoes was constant. Coach pulled me aside and told me I’d be playing the second half. My palms dampened; my mind replayed every clumsy move I’d made in practice. I wanted to hide on the bench. Jay Jay clapped me on the back and said, “You got this.” That small push felt like a shove off a cliff—terrifying but inevitable. I ran onto the court, and for the first few minutes every noise seemed too sharp: the referee’s whistle, the buzz of the scoreboard, the crowd’s breath held in unison. Then something loosened. I made a pass that led to a score. I missed a shot, but someone else grabbed the rebound. By the end we won by one point. Walking off the court, adrenaline was still humming in my veins, but so was a quiet confidence. I had shown up under pressure. I had been scared and still performed. That’s different from pretending fear isn’t there—it’s acting anyway.
The last test was the hardest: packing our life into boxes and moving three towns over. I remember the cardboard smell and the hollow echo of empty rooms as my family folded sheets and stacked dishes. My mother made a list of what to look forward to; my father kept the truck steady. I wanted to cling to the old house like a child clutching a blanket. On the last night I sat on the steps of the porch and felt time compress—photos, backyard games, the hum of the streetlight that had been my night companion. Jay Jay came by one last time to say goodbye. “You’ll make new spots to sit,” he said, giving me the same look he did after that game—part joke, part serious. I learned to trust that people and experiences could be replaced by new versions, not erased. The moving day was a slow grief and a strange excitement all at once: I felt loss for what I left and curiosity about what I would become in a new place.
Putting these moments together, I realized the pattern. Each milestone asked me to leave a small, comfortable island and step into something uncertain: to listen instead of lead when it mattered, to enter a noisy gym rather than hide, to close a door on the past and open another. Fear didn’t disappear in any of those moments. What changed was my willingness to act despite it. That willingness made me more reliable, more open, and more alive to what other people could bring into my life.
The lesson mattered because it turned “the biggest” into a series of smaller choices. Growing up wasn’t one large event that hit me all at once. It was the accumulation of decisions—asking a teammate for their idea, taking a breath before running on the court, packing the last box and walking away—that reshaped who I was. Now, when I stand at the edge of something uncomfortable, I think back to Mr. Morales’s classroom, to the squeaky gym floor, to the empty kitchen, and I tell myself: I can do one small brave thing. That’s how you grow.
What I changed and why
- Voice: Rewrote entirely in first person (addresses the –3 point deduction and teacher’s note to use “I”).
- Transitions: Added linking phrases and reflection after each event to show emotional continuity.
- Sensory/emotional detail: Included smells, sounds, physical sensations (stomach twist, palms damp) to “show” emotions rather than just tell them.
- Reflections: After each scene I added explicit personal thoughts/feelings and a final paragraph tying the events to a clear lesson.
- Conventions: Cleaned punctuation and sentence endings; check for spacing issues and missing periods in your final document.
If you want, I can:
- Shorten or expand this to match your required length.
- Edit it to match a specific grade-level tone or word-count.
- Insert direct quotes from Jay Jay or family members from your original draft if you paste parts of it here.