I don’t know what I think until I write it down – Joan Didion
Why write information texts?
Children accumulate lots of information every single day. It is vital to their development as writers that they are given the opportunity to share their knowledge and expertise with others and to experiment with the language and organisation of non-fiction genres (see this article for more details).
This class writing project will show children that they can be knowledgeable about a subject and that sharing this knowledge is an enjoyable, social and satisfying thing to do. You and your class will begin to appreciate the pockets of ‘communities’ that make up a writing classroom – with children talking and sharing with each other their passions, interests and aspects of their lives (Young et al. 2022). It is important for children to understand the power of writing as information giving but also to experience it as a social resource.