Information Text: All About Animals

Study type: Genre Study | Status: Exemplar

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Concepts

This study delivers 1 primary concept and 3 secondary concepts.

Primary concept: Writing for different purposes (EN-KS1-C047)

Type: Skill | Teaching weight: 3/6

Adapting writing for different text types (narrative, recount, poetry)

Teaching guidance: Introduce different text types through reading before asking children to write them. Cover key purposes: narrative (stories), recount (retelling events), instruction (how to do something), information (facts about a topic), letters, and poetry. Discuss the features of each text type explicitly: 'Instructions use numbered steps and bossy verbs.' Provide model texts and writing frames to scaffold early attempts. Ensure children understand that the purpose of writing determines its form and language choices. Key vocabulary: purpose, story, recount, instructions, information, letter, poem, audience, text type, for Common misconceptions: Children may default to narrative structure for all writing, including instructions and information texts. They may not understand that different purposes require different language features (e.g., imperative verbs in instructions, past tense in recounts). Some children focus on content without considering who they are writing for.

Differentiation

Model response (Entry): 'This is a farm with cows and sheep.'

Model response (Developing): '1. Get two slices of bread. 2. Spread butter on both slices. 3. Add cheese. 4. Put the slices together.'

Model response (Expected): Child writes with a greeting, recounts the trip in past tense with personal detail, and ends with a sign-off.

Model response (Greater Depth): Diary: 'Today was the best day ever! We went to the museum and I saw a real dinosaur skeleton.' Newsletter: 'Year 2 visited the Natural History Museum on Tuesday. The children particularly enjoyed the dinosaur exhibition.' 'The diary is personal and uses I/we. The newsletter is formal and written for parents.'

Secondary concept: Retrieval (EN-KS1-C016)

Type: Skill | Teaching weight: 2/6

Finding and extracting explicit information from text

Differentiation

Secondary concept: Expanded noun phrases (EN-KS1-C060)

Type: Skill | Teaching weight: 3/6

Adding adjectives to nouns for description (e.g., the blue butterfly)

Differentiation

Secondary concept: Commas in lists (EN-KS1-C065)

Type: Skill | Teaching weight: 3/6

Using commas to separate items in a list

Differentiation

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Thinking lens: Evidence and Argument (primary)

Key question: What is the evidence, how reliable is it, and what conclusions can it support? Why this lens fits: Self-correction is driven by the reader checking their decoding or interpretation against the evidence of surrounding context — 'does this word make sense here?' is an implicit argument from evidence. Question stems for KS1:

How do you know that?

What clues can you see?

Can you finish: I think... because...?

Is that a guess or do you know for sure?

Secondary lens: Perspective and Interpretation — Book discussion and recognising literary language both involve responding to an author's choices — pupils are beginning to distinguish their own reading experience from what the author intended or made possible.

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Session structure: Text Study

Text Study

A reading-to-writing cycle for primary and KS3 English. Begins with shared or guided reading of a high-quality text, moves through analysis of language features and authorial choices, builds vocabulary, then scaffolds the writing process from planning through drafting to editing and publication.

shared_reading → analysis → vocabulary → planning → drafting → editing Assessment: Final written outcome in the genre studied, demonstrating understanding of text features, appropriate vocabulary use, and effective application of the writing process. Teacher note: Use the TEXT STUDY template: read a short, engaging text together, using pictures and expression to bring it alive. Help children point out interesting words and talk about what they mean. Guide them to say what happened in the story or what the text told them. Encourage them to have a go at their own simple piece of writing inspired by the text. KS1 question stems:

What happened in the story?

Which was your favourite word? Why do you like it?

How did the character feel? How do you know?

Can you write your own sentence like the one we read?

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Text type and features

Text type: Non Fiction Features to teach: title and subheadings, topic sentences, present tense for facts, labelled diagrams, simple glossary Writing outcome: Write a simple non-chronological report (6-10 sentences) about an animal with a title, subheadings, factual sentences in present tense, and a labelled diagram Grammar focus: present tense for facts, expanded noun phrases, commas in lists, subordination (because, when) (from Y2 Appendix 2)

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Suggested texts

DK My First Animal Encyclopedia by DK — Clear non-fiction layout with subheadings, diagrams, and facts

National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Animals by Catherine D. Hughes — Accessible animal facts with excellent photographs

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Genre

Information: Reference texts organised for retrieval rather than continuous reading. Teaches pupils to use and create non-linear text features (contents, index, glossary, cross-references). Distinct from reports in that information texts are designed for dipping into rather than reading sequentially.

Report: Texts that present factual information organised by topic rather than chronologically. A core non-fiction form across KS1-KS3 that develops research, retrieval, and organisational skills. Cross-curricular by nature: report writing in English draws on content from Science, Geography, and History.

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Why this study matters

Non-chronological reports about animals are the standard entry point to information writing at KS1 because children are naturally interested in animals and already have background knowledge. The cross-curricular link to Science (living things, habitats) provides authentic content. The structured layout (title, subheadings, facts) teaches organisational skills transferable to all non-fiction writing.

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Pitfalls to avoid

Children copy facts verbatim from the source rather than putting them in their own words

Subheadings used decoratively rather than to organise information into categories

Present tense inconsistency (mixing 'Lions live in Africa' with 'The lion lived in a den')

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Cross-curricular opportunities

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Reading and writing skills (KS1)

These disciplinary skills should be woven through teaching, not taught in isolation:

Structural and organisational analysis — Analyse how authors structure and organise texts at macro and micro levels — including genre conventions, narrative or argumentative architecture, paragraph organisation and sentence-level choices — and evaluate the effect of those structural decisions on the reader.

Noticing interesting words and phrases — Identify and discuss words and phrases that capture attention or create an effect, beginning to explain what makes them interesting, surprising or effective in the context of the text.

Prediction and hypothesis about texts — Form and evaluate hypotheses about a text's development, themes and intentions, revising those hypotheses in light of subsequent reading and explaining how earlier predictions were confirmed, complicated or subverted.

Critical summarising of extended texts — Summarise and distil ideas and arguments from substantial and challenging texts, exercising critical judgement about which information is central to the author's purpose and which is peripheral.

Word meaning from context — Understand the meaning of unfamiliar words encountered in simple texts by using the surrounding context, including pictures and sentence sense, to make a reasonable guess at what the word means.

Vocabulary in context — Give or explain the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, drawing on understanding of the surrounding passage, knowledge of similar words, and awareness of how context shapes word meaning.

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Vocabulary word mat

Prior knowledge (retrieval plan)

Pupils should already know the following from earlier units:

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Scaffolding and inclusion (Y2)

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Access and Inclusion

Likely barriers

Moderate demands on: Decoding Demand (Retrieval requires the child to locate and extract explicit information from text, which presupposes they can read the text. If decoding is effortful, the child spends cognitive resources on reading rather than on the retrieval skill.).

Universal supports

Apply by default for all learners:

Text-to-Speech — Machine reading of on-screen text aloud so the child can listen rather than decode. TTS allows children with reading difficulties to access text-based content through their auditory channel, separating the act of reading from the target learning objective. The child controls playback: play, pause, speed, repeat.

Targeted options

Simplified Language Wrapper — Rewriting task instructions, questions, and explanations using simpler sentence structures, shorter sentences, and more common vocabulary — while preserving the full complexity of the underlying concept. The mathematical, scientific, or literary idea is not simplified; only the language surrounding it is made more accessible. This requires careful judgement about which words are domain-essential (keep) versus incidental complexity (simplify). (targets: Decoding Demand)

Use with caution

Simplified Language Wrapper — construct risk: conditional. Unsafe when assessing: language_load

Text-to-Speech — construct risk: conditional. Unsafe when assessing: decoding_demand

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Knowledge organiser

Key terms:

report

non-chronological

subheading

fact

diagram

label

caption

glossary

Core facts (expected standard):

Writing for different purposes: Writing for a range of purposes — narrative, recount, instruction, information, letter, poetry — using features appropriate to each text type.

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Graph context

Node type: EnglishUnit | Study ID: EU-EN-KS1-007 Concept IDs:

EN-KS1-C047: Writing for different purposes (primary)

EN-KS1-C016: Retrieval

EN-KS1-C060: Expanded noun phrases

EN-KS1-C065: Commas in lists

Cypher query:

``cypher

MATCH (ts:EnglishUnit {unit_id: 'EU-EN-KS1-007'})

-[:DELIVERS_VIA]->(c:Concept)

-[:HAS_DIFFICULTY_LEVEL]->(dl)

RETURN c.name, dl.label, dl.description

``

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Generated from the UK Curriculum Knowledge Graph — zero LLM generation.