The National Literacy Strategy identifies six major non-fiction text-types, or genres of writing, with which children should be familiar by the end of primary school. One reason for the emphasis on explicit grammatical knowledge in the strategy is to enable pupils to recognise and talk about specific features of these genres, both when reading and when trying to write particular sorts of texts themselves.

On the following pages are seasonal examples of three of the text-types, with activities to direct pupils’ attention to their important features. On page 26 is a summary of the characteristics of the remaining three.