Non-chronological Reports

In this engaging six-lesson unit, children will learn how to write their own non-chronological reports on a topic they know best — their favourite hobby! Throughout the unit, pupils will build essential writing skills, including expanding their vocabulary by exploring the meaning of unfamiliar words and learning how to use the passive voice effectively. They'll have the chance to research, organise information, and become true experts on their chosen hobby, culminating in a polished final report.

Perfect for the end of the year as a fun and reflective project, or at the start of the year to help you get to know your new class! This pack includes everything you need: detailed lesson plans, printable resources, differentiated activities, and ready-to-use lesson slides.

Why not upgrade to our Me, Myself and I Topic Bundle – perfect if you're looking for a cross-curricular approach to your teaching! 

Vocabulary

In this initial lesson on non-chronological reports your class will explore some unknown technical vocabulary that is used in non-fiction writing. They will discuss the different strategies they may use to determine the meaning of a word using the context as well as replacing the word with synonymous vocabulary to see if they fit.

This lesson relies on the children discussing the vocabulary used by the author and thinking carefully about the change in meaning and/or effect when we replace words in a sentence. They will need to justify and reason their choices for synonyms and come up with a best fit scenario when investigating an unknown word.

This lesson comes with everything you need including lesson slides, detailed planning, differentiated activity ideas and printable resources.

View Lesson 1

Non-chronological Report Features

This lesson focuses on reviewing the features of this genre and identifying them in example texts. The children will identify the features, and evaluate the effectiveness of their use in different examples. They will assess the texts as a whole and suggest different ways they would improve the use of different structural features as well as grammatical features.

The included lesson slides in this lesson pack help you to lead discussions around this genre and how to create an effective non-chronological report. The example texts provided offer examples of both good and bad uses of the features and encourage the children to think critically about the writing.

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Passive Voice

This lesson takes a closer look at the passive voice and how it is used in non-chronological reports. The children are challenged to identify the active and passive voice and change sentences into the alternative.

The activity ideas provided challenge your children to select a sentence and identify if it is the active or passive voice before changing it between the two voices. Alternatively, the children can identify active sentences in a non-chronological report extract and decide if the sentence sounds better in the active or passive voice, giving reasons for their choices.

The variety of differentiated activities provided in this lesson pack will make sure you have an appropriate activity for your class to explore the passive voice. All the resources you need are provided along with answer sheets to save you time!

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Researching and Collecting Information

In this lesson the children have the opportunity to show off what they know about their favourite hobby or topic. The aim is to collect and record all the information they know about their chosen hobby in one place, ready to use in their non-chronological reports. In order to become experts, the children will also have the opportunity to research information to fill any knowledge gaps they may have.

The lesson slides included in this pack provide you with tailored questions to draw out the discussions about the hobbies as well as discussions about effective research. These ideas can then be used by the children when collecting information on the lesson's worksheets.

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Organising and Planning a Report

In this lesson the children will create the plans for the non-chronological reports they will write in the following lesson. They will look closely at the information they collected and decide on the subheadings they will use to organise and guide their reader.

Using the 'Fancy Something Different?' (FSD?) activity, encourage your class to create a double page spread in their books for their report, using scrap paper to map out and organise information into sections.

This complete lesson comes with a detailed lesson plan, differentiated activity ideas, lesson slides and printable accompanying resources.

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Writing and Presenting a Report

In this final non-chronological report lesson, the children will spend time drafting and presenting their reports on their favourite hobbies. The included lesson slides focus on and discuss the structure of paragraphs, specifically topic sentences. They will use this discussion to influence their own paragraphs.

Alternatively, the children can use presentation software to turn their report into a presentation on their favourite hobby, using the same grammatical and language features discussed in previous lessons.

This complete lesson comes with a detailed lesson plan, differentiated activity ideas, lesson slides and printable accompanying resources.

View Lesson 6