How to Teach Point of View: First Person, Second Person, and Third Person

Teaching perspective and point of view when it comes to reading analysis is often the first step in a more advanced interpretation of any story. It is one of the capstone lessons that take place in middle school, and it is almost always found in canned curriculum guides that are used by larger districts. Traditionally, teachers focus on the first person, second person, and third person. Then, within third person- third person omniscient and third person limited. Narrative reliability often happens in 8th grade and beyond. This post is about how to do a brief introduction to the basic concepts of first person, second person, and third person.

As a reminder, here are quick definitions of each of the points of view:

First Person- the speaker or whoever is telling the story is speaking

Second Person- focuses on the listener of the story, think of this like a tour guide (On your left, you will see…)

Third Person- a voice outside of the speaker and the listener is telling the story

Third Person Limited- the voice doesn’t have all of the information, the individual scenes of a story are told with just that scene’s information

Third Person Omniscient- the voice is all-knowing, it knows all events, feelings, back stories, and what is going to happen