Source story and 12 activity ideas, plus PowerPoint version of story
KS2
Years 3-6
Are you searching for an inspiring explanation text KS2 resource? You’re in luck! Give your children a lot of explaining to do with these inventive non-fiction activities from Pie Corbett.
Explanation text KS2 download
Introduce explanation texts to your class with Pie Corbett’s two model texts about the ‘Teacher-Pleaser Machine’ and the ‘Tidy Your Bedroom Machine’.
Most explanatory writing that children are asked to do is rather dull. However, because children have a natural inclination towards being ‘inventors’, the idea of designing either real or imaginary machines can be a great motivator.
Don’t forget to explain the difference between instructions and explanation texts because children can often find this confusing. Explanation texts tell the reader how things work or why things happen. They are about one thing resulting in another – cause and effect.
One word of warning – because children enjoy drawing their inventions so much, it’s easy to forget that you are also teaching them to explain how it works. It helps to keep the key language feature you’re teaching in your mind. This might be causal connectives, for example.
The download contains:
- Guide for teachers, containing two explanation texts and activity ideas
- PowerPoint file presenting the story as a series of six illustrated slides
More resources
Use these inspiring Pie Corbett non-fiction texts to get your KS2 pupils writing. And read more about how to teach pupils to write an explanation text.
Pie Corbett is an English educational trainer, writer, author and poet who has written over 200 books.
