Report Writing

One important expectation in language in Grade 6 is the ability to write reports that contain multiple paragraphs and include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. We move away from writing paragraphs to writing longer pieces, organized in a traditional 5 paragraph format.

We have been reading many types of non-fiction text and finding the main idea and supporting details. Also, we have been learning to differentiate between facts and opinions. It is important to read many examples of non-fiction before writing, because student learn by seeing and studying sample of good non-fiction works.

The next step in writing reports is to write one together, which we called shared writing. In our shared writing, we used the book about cheetahs which we were reading aloud and I demonstrated how I would take notes from a text by organizing facts into the 3 main ideas we want to write about. Then we organized those facts into an outline to begin writing our non-fiction report. Finally, we wrote the report together using ideas students provided.

After writing a report together, I provided students with an opportunity to write a report if given an outline. First, we read a non-fiction text, which we analyzed and broke down into the main ideas and supporting details. Then, we used the outlines we had just created and re-wrote the reports in our own words using the outline we made. This helped students in writing because they were not able to look at the original text, but were able to remember what it looked like as a final product.

Finally, students will be writing reports of their own from beginning to end independently. They will be choosing a topic, performing research, organizing their notes into an outline, and then writing their reports.

Here is the success criteria, rubric and organizers students have been given to create their reports. We started this last week, but had to stop for a bit to work on our Digital Citizenship projects for Anti-Bullying Week. We will be returning to this either on Tuesday or Wednesday next week.

Information Report Success Criteria