Establishing Purpose for Writing/Document

Establishing a purpose for writing

Pupils need to know what they are writing and who they are writing for. It helps if you can define this with them. Purposes for writing are about the text type(s) involved, and the text type(s) go some way towards defining the overall structure and the kinds of sentence required.

Major text types are:

• instruction;
• recount;
• explanation/description;
• information;
• persuasion;
• discussion;
• analysis;
• evaluation.

Text types in your subject

With your colleague, decide what text types are required in your subject. Reflect on how explicit you are about those types when asking pupils to complete a writing task.

As pupils move through Key Stages 3 and 4, the text types tend to become blurred. Pupils will need to explain/inform to persuade; they will need to use information to support discussion and explain points of view, but explicit knowledge about the various types helps them combine them effectively.

Creating a context for writing

Description of the writing task	Helpful	Partly helpful	Unhelpful
1Write a recipe for a party milk-shake for publication in a Christmas edition of a teenage magazine.
2 Was King John a good or bad king?
3Write a letter to your MP protesting against the building of new houses on local greenbelt land.
4 Write up your castle project.
5Produce two pages of writing on the title ‘How I survived the rainforest’.
6Write a report of your investigation into the magnetic effect of conducting wire.
7Rewrite in your own words the story of Prometheus.
8 Write up your mathematics investigation.
9Produce a script for a three-minute national TV news story describing the causes and effects of the Bangladesh floods.
10 Write an obituary for the artist Matisse.
11 Write a booklet for Year 5 pupils explaining the origins of the English language.
12 Write an evaluation of your Design and technology project.

Creating a context for writing

Read the Creating a context for writing grid above and identify whether each task is helpful, partly helpful or unhelpful to the pupils. The more explicit the task, the more helpful it is to the pupils. Match your thinking to some recent tasks you have set. Are there some you could have clarified?

Classroom assignment: text types

Think about the next writing task you are going to set. Plan to ensure that it is helpful to your pupils. Plan to be explicit about the text type required and its key features at text, sentence and word level. Evaluate the effect of what you did. Ask the pupils for feedback about whether it made writing easier for them.