Writing meaningful text: vocabulary knowledge resources

Students identify whether to use 'there' or 'their' in a piece of student writing.

Students will identify and use nouns, adjectives, and verbs to write a poem that follows the same structure as given in two examples.

Students read a letter written to the Board of Trustees, and make it more formal by writing the contractions as full words.

Students expand common contractions to their full form, then write the contracted forms of other common two-word phrases.

Students are required to identify the nouns and proper nouns in a short story about a class trip to the zoo.

Students first do the science activity Throwing balloons 3 or Throwing balloons 4 where they predict, observe, and explain what will happen when a balloon containing another balloon filled with water is thrown. Then the students do this resource's writing task where they describe the balloon and what happens when it is thrown, and explain why they think it moved the way it did. Six annotated exemplars of student scripts (writing) are included under the "Working with Students" tab.

Students create character vignettes with a focus on writing pieces that are brief, descriptive and set in one point in time. They should not be concerned with plot. As the emphasis is on quality rather than quantity, students need to show a controlled and elegant skill in writing, and to use figurative language to 'show' rather than 'tell'.