Lesson · Grade 5 · English Language Arts
Writing for Your Audience
- Grade 5
- English Language Arts
- 1 min 21 s
- British Columbia
- BC5-EN-18
Sam's first draft of some game rules for six-year-olds reads like a rule book, so the video asks who will read it and marks the hard words, the single 22-word sentence and the stiff "must" in red. The same rules are then rewritten for the young readers, with plain words, three short sentences and a friendly "Have fun!" lit up in green, ending on the recap that you know your reader and then choose your words, sentences and tone to suit them.
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In one sentence
The question this lesson answers
Before you write, ask yourself one question: who will read this?
Sam is writing the rules of a tag game for a class of six-year-olds.
Transcript
What the lesson says
Before you write, ask yourself one question: who will read this?
Sam is writing the rules of a tag game for a class of six-year-olds.
Here is Sam's first draft.
Would a six-year-old understand this? Probably not.
Good writers match three things to their reader: the words, the sentences and the tone.
First, the words. Adjacent, designated and cease are too hard for young children.
Next, the sentences. This is one sentence, 22 words long.
Last, the tone. With must, and must again, it sounds like a strict rule book.
So Sam writes it again, this time for six-year-olds.
The words are ones they know: beside, buddy, freeze.
The sentences are short: three of them, 14 words in all.
And the tone is friendly. Have fun!
The message is the same, but now the reader can understand it.
Know your reader, then choose your words, your sentences and your tone to suit them.
Curriculum
Where this fits
- British Columbia, Grade 5
English Language Arts, Strategies and processes: writing processesBC5-EN-18
- British Columbia, Grade 6
English Language Arts, Strategies and processes: writing processesBC6-EN-18
- British Columbia, Grade 7
English Language Arts, Strategies and processes: writing processesBC7-EN-18
This lesson is also listed in Grade 6 and Grade 7.
The outcomes and strands follow the British Columbia curriculum.
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