Teach Informational Writing & Expository Writing – An Overview of the Process

How do you teach expository writing in your classroom? I wish I could do it throughout the year thematically as we approach different content. I mean, isn’t that how life works?

We can do that occasionally, but in reality, our district gives a writing assessment on a certain date ,and I need to prepare students for that writing assessment.  So we do a whole unit on Expository & Informational Writing.

Below is the process that we use when approaching expository or informational writing development in second grade. There are a lot of links below to other, more in-depth blog posts and other resources that I’ve created over the years.  This post is a good overview of our process.  The links are more specific to the week and the animal we write about.

Use Familiar Content to Teach Informational Writing

In second grade, we focus on writing about animals for our expository writing unit. Animals are tangible and easily understood by students. They have certain attributes, do certain things, and reproduce themselves in predictable ways (at least the ones we study do!).

When learning how to write, I want to make the topic easy enough for students so that they’re not learning about the topic at the same time as they’re learning how to write in a new structure. I know students are learning new facts about the animals, but animals are still familiar enough to students that I don’t consider it completely new content.

Think of it as a see-saw. If the content is too hard, students won’t be able to use academic language and form good sentences when writing. They’re struggling just to understand the new vocabulary and link the ideas together. If I want students to concentrate on developing their writing skills, then I need to make sure the content is accessible to them.

Plus, second graders just love learning about different animals and our writing assessments is about an animal. It all ties together.

Our expository writing about one animal generally takes about a week, sometimes four days, toward the end of the unit as students become familiar with the routines.  Below is the structure of our week, in general.  At the end of the blog post are links to other posts for specific weeks.

Day 1: Gather Information

Day one is all about gathering our information. I elicit input from students and we do some research about the animal.

Find out what students know

The first thing that I do is sit down with students using a circle map. I ask students what they know about the animal and write down anything students say that they know, even if it’s wrong. We basically do a collective brainstorm about all the information we know about an animal.  We do go back and correct our misconceptions as we do our research.

Research the Topic

Our research stage includes reading an informational article and watching a video or two about the animal. I choose the animal we research based on the well-written informational articles I can find. I usually look to Scholastic News or other online sources for good articles.

However, I wasn’t able to find many well-written articles for second graders that were short and easy for classroom use, so I started to write my own Animal Articles.

Take notes as we go

We will usually take notes on our circle map as we read and watch. When we learn something new, we put it below the circle. When we confirm a fact we knew, we check it off. When we find out we were wrong, we cross it out.

I facilitate the taking notes portion because I want to lower the cognitive load for students.  This goes back to the see saw I mentioned above.  My goal is not that students learn a whole bunch of animal facts (although that’s an awesome bi-product).  My goal is that students learn to write good expository paragraphs.  I don’t want them to become burdened with writing facts, spelling, and other extraneous skills.  I want to focus on the quality of their writing.

Day 2: Work with the Information

On Day 2, we use the information on the circle map and sort our facts. We generally sort by attributes, actions, and environment, although for a few animals, I change it up a bit, depending on the focus of the article.

At the beginning of the unit, I create sentences out of our notes and type them into a grid for students to cut apart. Toward the end of the unit, I take a photograph of the circle map and print it up in black and white for students to cut apart. Although I would like to have students take their own notes, I haven’t found it to be effective.

This goes back to the see-saw. My goal is for students to learn the academic language of writing informational/expository paragraphs. They need facts and details to do that, but they don’t necessarily need to generate the facts and details. When students have to take notes about an animal themselves, they get bogged down in the facts about the animal and don’t concentrate on the process of writing.

Day 3, 4, 5: Write About the Animal

On the remaining days of the week, we write our expository paragraphs. Usually, on Day 3, I will highlight a specific piece or structure of the writing that I want students to pay attention to and we practice it before starting our paragraphs. I focus on things like topic sentences, transition words, or expanding our sentences. It’s a different lesson each week, usually based on the writing from the previous week. Students usually complete a draft of their paragraph on Day 3.

On day 4, I read students’ drafts and they write their final paragraph on the publishing paper. Depending on students’ speed, they illustrate their picture on Day 4 or 5. As I mentioned above, the process goes faster as students become more and more familiar with it.

Video about this Informational Writing Process

Here is a Facebook Live video I recorded about this process.  This video follows the information in this blog post and provides an overview of a week of writing.

Additional Blog Posts

During our Informational Writing Unit, we write about one animal a week, generally, over a seven or eight-week period. These are some blog posts about how we worked through our informational writing unit a couple of years ago.

• Week 1: Sea Turtles
• Week 2: Spade-Foot Toad
• Week 3: Wolves
• Week 4: Ladybugs
• Week 5: Bird Migration
• Week 6: Lionfish

Seasonal Posts

• Reindeer
• Genius Paragraphs: Polar Bears
• Bats: Nonfiction Writing

Resources for Informational Writing

A couple of resources that you might find helpful include Informational Writing Tools (also available on TpT) and Animal Articles.

Informational Writing Tools

The Informational Writing Tools {All About Animals} includes all of the sorts that you have seen in the above blog posts as well as a publishing page, graphic organizers, checklists, and weekly lessons. It’s basically all of the information from the blog posts above in one succinct product.

In the product, I go in-depth on some of the Day 3 lessons I do with students to help them create topic sentences or organize their paragraphs. This product does not include any informational articles, but it does include links to articles and videos where applicable.

Also available is a BUNDLED Elementary Writing Tools product that has the Informational Writing Tools, Narrative Writing Tools, and Opinion Unit.

Animal Articles

Animal Articles are the articles that we use to gather information about each of the animals. I have packets for African Animals, Rainforest Animals, and Life Cycles. Coming soon are Coral Reef and Antarctic Animals.

These articles all have an article in a two-page format with vivid photographs, a one-page article with no photos, a page of QR codes with videos and additional websites for research, and a fact sort.  Also available for FREE is a Caribou article (This is only a two-page article.  There are no sorts or QR Codes).

---

Is this all the expository writing we do all year? No. I like to do bits of expository writing as we respond to reading or around different seasons and holidays. However, is how we do our large expository writing unit.

---