ABSTRACT
The reports and explanations children are asked to write are an important feature of lessons across the curriculum. Younger children will write using some of the structural and linguistic features of report but using an informal or ‘expressive’ voice. Explanation texts are by their nature likely to be multimodal, involving design of the pages, illustrations and writing. Teachers sometimes carry out shared writing using a whiteboard, asking children to create a text jointly. This is an opportunity for genre features of texts to be pointed out. To bring in written texts, children could be asked to recommend some reading for their classmates, both print and screen-based, to extend their understanding. Towards the end of a series of lessons or a project, teacher and children can usefully talk about and evaluate all the resources they have been using.
