Year 1

[Lucie]

Can anyone help? What kinds of activities can I set up for children to access independently that will encourage them to ask and answer questions? This is in preparation for writing information texts.

 

Thanks

Lucie

[finleysmaid]

how about wrapped 'presents' they have to guess what's inside them and write down their guesses (no peaking allowed!)

[catma]

Well this would I guess require things they would be interested in asking questions about before they find the answers...what could you provide that would stimulate this kind of discussion. An investigation table with slips of paper where they could record a question and read/respond to others' questions maybe??

Cx

[Susan]

If you want the children to write information texts then you need to give them plenty of information texts to look at.

When I did this with year 1, in the summer term, we wrote information texts about our school. We looked at texts of different levels and topics from the guided reading scheme, which we read together and then had free access to. We also shared a big book with a history focus about schools. We were able to discuss the features of the texts --captions, photos, contents, index etc and children then wrote about our school.

[ChrisAR]

Go on a local walk or visit that ties into one of the foundation subjects, do lots of paired talk back in class, use it to create a class non fiction book.

[Guest]

maybe completely off the point here but a suggestion - we have a police role-play and children are reporting a missing story character - puppet is hidden in the room by child going to report it missing, then police person has to find out about the character in order to tell other police personnel who to look out for.

We're just getting away from saying who is missing to having to give descriptive information...

Not sure if it would sit better with descriptive language in Year 1 as can't see how to end up with a useful book - just list of 'investigations' and 'mysteries solved'!