Abstract
In the chapter How To Ensure You Have A Purpose And Audience For Your Writing Units, from our book How To Teach Writing, we show how purpose and audience for class writing projects is essential for fostering engagement and quality in children’s writing.
Often, students struggle to connect with their audience when the writing tasks are based on artificial prompts and lack a real audience. This disconnection can be particularly challenging for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Effective writing instruction includes clear discussion of publishing goals, enabling students to understand the purpose of their writing and its intended recipients. Schools can support this by introducing the six common reasons for writing, promoting the integration of various purposes to enrich texts, and helping students develop skills in empathy and perspective-taking. Teachers should ask guiding questions to help students consider their audience’s needs and utilise resources like a Publishing & Performing Menu to decide on the final delivery of their writing.
Introducing the GAP (Genre, Audience, Purpose) framework can help in clearly defining writing projects. Allowing students to contribute to the decision-making process also fosters ownership and relevance.
Practical examples and creative publishing methods, such as community sharing or personal delivery, further enhance the authenticity of class writing project. Consistently integrating these elements can ensure that writing projects are meaningful, audience-focused, and engaging for all students.
To find out more, download our book How To Teach Writing here.
