PIRATES!

Sometimes writing about things we don't know much about can be tricky. That's why generating plenty of ideas first, before any story writing happens, is very important.



To help motivate the class learn how to write an effective narrative, I chose a 'pirate' theme for the writing to be centred around. The only trouble is, not everyone knows a lot about pirates.



So I found 4 very descriptive poems about pirates. In groups, as they read the poems, the children wrote on sticky notes 3 'facts' about pirates they figured out by reading each poem.



After the poems had been read, we had over 30 post-it notes filled with pirate facts. Next, each group looked at their facts and sorted them into main groups such as 'things a pirate might say' or 'things a pirate might do'. They then cut them up and glued them onto a big chart on the classroom wall.



This is now our "pirate story' display, where the children can go to get ideas when planning and writing their pirate story, which we will start later in the week. It was a visual, motivating activity to get the class thinking on a certain 'theme', where their prior knowledge might not have been great.