Writing for different genres - SEND

Writing for different genres – SEND is a downloadable set of lesson plans that can be used to support students with special educational needs and disabilities at key stage 3. It has been adapted specifically for SEND students and reluctant writers, and is designed to work in targeted intervention sessions.

It features seven comic strips as prompts to engage neurodiverse students, such as those with dyspraxia, dyslexia or ADD/ADHD. The images, alongside simplified definitions of key terms, vocabulary exercises, word banks and writing prompts will also help to support EAL learners (students who speak English as an additional language) and INA students (International New Arrivals).

Seven genres of writing
It includes lesson plans, teaching notes, exemplars, scaffolded writing templates and worksheets to help students to learn about the language, structure and form of seven different writing styles. By understanding the writing process, they will learn how to produce a range of text types, some of which might be new genres for students.

The writing activities are based on themes to appeal to young adults, such as music, football, aliens and pets, and cover a range of different genres:

• a fictional diary
• a formal letter
• a playscript
• a fictional recount
• a list
• a poem
• a comic strip.

Each lesson includes suggestions for starters, as well as a range of differentiated activities to develop students’ vocabulary and writing skills. Students will feel more confident developing their own writing style and writing in specific genres. They will also understand the differences between writing fiction and non-fiction texts.

Key features:
It is accompanied by a PowerPoint for use in class, which contains useful checklists of the language features and structure of each writing genre.

• Includes a lesson plan and teaching notes for each of the seven different writing genres.
• Includes seven original comic strips as writing prompts.
• Includes a PowerPoint with 22 slides of checklists and activities, summarising the language features and structures of each text type.
• Includes a range of carefully scaffolded activities to take students step-by-step through the process of writing for each particular genre, including vocab exercises and word banks, sentence starters and frames, and planning and writing templates.

What’s included?
There are 57 pages of classroom activities:

1. ‘A Week’s Excuses’ – writing a diary
2. ‘Something Odd Out There’ – writing a formal letter
3. ‘Alien Arrival’ – writing a playscript
4. ‘Jennifer Jones’ – writing a recount
5. ‘Sad I Ams’ – writing a bulleted list
6. ‘StereoHead’– writing poetry
7. ‘The Dark Avenger’ – writing a comic strip