Report Writing/Informational Texts

Today I am going to share with you some of the activities from my Report Writing Units.

            Year 1 and 2                                        Year 5 and 6                                    Year 3 and 4

 I love to use the gradual release of responsibility model which sees students gradually having more control of writing .  I start off with showing them lots of texts and we do some text hunts.

To do a text hunt have all the headings on small bits of paper and draw them out of the hat one at a time. Students need to locate the information, summarise and record. I start this activity in pairs with younger students and then repeat with another text with students working independently. This activity allows them to become familiar with the layout and headings of a report and practice their scanning and sumarising skills.

Then students begin piecing together the text. I give them a version with the headings separate and students glue them on. Then I give them one where they must write the headings themselves. Eventually I give them a completely jumbled text that they must workout the order and layout.

I then do a mid unit assessment but because I only want to assess the students ability to write the text time and not have their ability (or lack of) to research get in the way I get them to interview another student in the class and then write a report on that person. The students are always so engaged in this activity and it really shows their knowledge of a text type.

Report Writing Display or Activity

Next I get students to research a topic. I let every student pick their own topic to maximize engagement. The younger the students the more restrictive I am of where they can locate their information but I give older students the freedom to google websites. I like to give students prompts for what kinds of information to put under each heading.

Report Writing Question Prompts

Lastly, I let students present their report any way they like; posters, flip books, displays, book, presentation. A long as they can address the items in the rubric though their desired output.

Now I would like to share a few thing I DO NOT DO when teaching text types.

1. I don't have the whole class researching the same topic at the same time and then write every sentence out as a class for them to copy and construct a report. This does not teach them anything except reliance on you, does not cater for anyone's diversity and the higher achieving students are not challenged.
2.  I don't allow them to choose their own questions about a topic. If they have a specific question they want answered then they can include it in a did you know section. This used to be the big way to do it. You'd get students to develop questions then research it. This just created a world of mess as students would ask unrelated or too specific or unanswerable questions.
3.  I don't allow students to type specific questions into google to find answers. I direct them to type in the topic and tap 'info for kids' on the end. This yields the best and most appropriate websites and then students read to locate information using the skills of they have learn about the construction of report text types
4. I do not give students a template to write their final product in. I give them a blank retrieval chart for recording information (like the one above) and then they present the information how ever they would like, Giving a template restricts how much students can (or would otherwise) write. For the weaker student it makes their reports look empty and makes them feel like greater failures. It also does not give them the opportunity to think about layout including the use and layout of headings.

You can find all my report writing units by clicking here and I also have ones for persuasive, procedural, poetry and narrative writing for all year levels.