Writing can be one of the trickiest things to teach students because there are several steps that need to be completed. This becomes even more complicated when you are trying to teach informational writing. The good news is I have several informational writing tips and resources to help you and your students write like a pro!
Choosing a Topic
Whenever you first start writing, you need to make sure you have a topic. One of the most common informational writing themes is animals. Because of this, I have great resources for American Animals, Canadian Animals, and North American animals. With these resources, your students can easily choose a topic which can sometimes be the hardest part for them.
Teach Informational Writing with a Checklist
To start, it’s good to begin with the first step in the writing process: planning. I like to make sure my students have a checklist. What I want my students to have when I teach informational writing is a heading, a diagram, labels on the diagram, and two to three sentences that are informational.
Because this is what I want, I make sure the note-taking paper has room for three facts. If you look at the image below, you can see the FACTS note taking paper. Those three facts don’t really need to be related; any three facts will work. One of the best parts of the products I have for informational writing is they come with a little book about their animal.
Within these animal books, there is a page that relates to each type of fact. These pages include information about what each animal looks like, their life cycle, environmental information, what each animal eats, and a page on interesting facts. So, when putting their three facts down, they can choose one topic from each page or three from one page.
Writing Your Informational Texts
A half-lined half-blank notebook will work well, as in the picture below, or the papers from my unit are designed specifically for this.
When I teach informational texts with second and third grade, I sometimes have them just start writing on the paper I have in my unit. However, you can also have them write it in their writing book first. Just keep in mind they need room for a diagram.
Modeling Informational Writing
Modeling the writing process or what you want students to do can be a great way to help students understand what you expect of them. For my example, I am going to talk about salmon because that is an important animal to the people in my area.
To begin modeling, I would tell my students we need to draw an animal and make it look as lifelike as we can. Because of this, we don’t want to draw a cartoon animal with big anime eyes. We want to draw something that is realistic because this is informative paper.
Labeling My Diagram
After drawing my picture, I want to make sure I label each part. To emphasize the importance of labeling, I might show them a diagram of something unknown with labels and then one with labels.
I need to make sure I label my diagram because that will help me when I am writing about my facts. So, I’m going to write adult, fry, alevin, and eggs.
Writing Your Informational Paper
When you start to write your informational paper, you want to get out your notes that have your three facts. At the top of my paper I’m going to add a heading. So, for our example, I would write “Salmon.” This will help people who are reading my paper understand what I am writing about.
Then, referencing my checklist, I know I have to write two or three sentences. To begin, I’m going to tell everyone what I am writing about by saying something about. When I teach informational writing, I make sure to emphasize this is the introduction. For my example, I might write something like:
- Salmon are interesting.
- Salmon are important to indigenous people.
- Salmon are fish.
- Salmon are interesting.
Now that I have my introduction, I am going to write down some facts I have listed in my note-taking. The facts I have include: that salmon are fish; they live in the ocean for most of their lives; they go back to the river they were born in to lay eggs.
Once I have my three facts written down, it’s important to include a conclusion. The concluding sentence can be their opinion about the animal. For example, I might write, “I think salmon are amazing. “
The Final Step
The final thing you to do to teach informational writing is to explain the importance of editing and revising. Once everything is written, you need to go back and re-read what you have written. While students are reading, make sure they pay attention to their checklist as well as spelling and grammar. You can even have students do this with a partner. I have found students love to read each other’s work.
Writing informational texts is such an important skill to learn. Using these steps and this modeling process will help students understand how to write as well as all the pieces of a research paper. Make sure you check out the resources in my TPT store to teach informational writing to your students with ease!
Interested in your own free copy of one of my animal research products? Sign up below and I will send you a copy of the POLAR BEAR pack, so you can try this lesson for your self.
