Grade 6 Writing Activities

By Grade 6, you might start to feel some resistance towards writing in favour of other activities, like video games, as your child becomes more independent. Use these writing activities to break that resistance and get your child writing!

1. The Alien Interview

This exercise is always popular with young writers as it activates their imagination. They will need to think outside of the box to come up with open ended questions to find out about a world that they know nothing about. There is also an element of drama involved which inspires children to open up and practice their speaking skills. Simply follow these steps to carry out the activity with your children:

• Step 1: Ask children to write 10 questions that they would like to ask an alien about their planet and way of life.
• Step 2: Share questions with the group allowing children that may be struggling a chance to borrow ideas from others.
• Step 3: Find each child a partner. Assign one child the role of ‘alien’ and the other child ‘interviewer’.
• Step 4: The interviewer asks their questions and notes down the answers along the way.
• Step 5: Leave some time at the end of the session to share some of the most interesting questions and answers.

2. Amazing News Reports

Budding young reporters will enjoy this challenge. Provide your child with some crazy, funny and interesting newspaper headlines. Then ask them to write the story all about what happened. As it is a news report, you can remind them to ensure they include the five W’s (What, Where, Who, Why, When). Here are a few examples of crazy news articles you could supply…

3. Think, Write, Pass!

This activity is a great way to get your sixth-grade children collaborating and working in teams to write stories. It can also throw up some interesting and often humorous results. As we all know, children learn best when they are engaged and enjoying activities!

Start by arranging children into groups of 5 or 6. Then, supply each child with a different story prompt. Invite each child to spend five minutes writing the opening paragraph of the story. When the time is up, ask them to pass their writing one space to their right. Continue this until the story has made its way completely around the table and it has arrived back to the original spot. The children then take turns to read the story aloud that they started to their fellow teammates. Children can vote on the one they enjoyed the most!

4. Time Capsule

Challenge your child to think of an object or possession that they would like to put into a time capsule. The object should be something that they believe people 100 years in the future would not know how to use.

Once they have decided on the object, they will need to now write instructions for how it was used in the 2020’s and state why it was important to them.

5. Top Five!

A great way to personalize the writing experience is to ask children to write about things they love and are passionate about. To set up this activity, begin by asking children to think about their ‘top five’ on a topic of your choice (books, films, music, sports etc.). Everyone should now make their list and then share it with the group. You can invite children to defend their choices and spark debate amongst the group. This is a great way of getting children to start using the language they’ll need for the upcoming written activity.

Once the time sharing ideas is complete, it’s time for the real writing to begin. Children should write a short blurb and review about each item on their list. You can use popular film and music review websites to help set up the format for this type of writing. Your children are sure to have fun with this activity!

6. Fact or Fiction

Sometimes a little choice is all it takes to inspire young writers. By giving them a choice between two different writing prompts or genres can be all it takes to get the best out of them. To get this activity up and running, simply display two different writing options for your child to choose between. One prompt should be story inspiration whereas the other option should be a factual prompt on a topic they know well.

7. Sports Reporter

This is a simple activity that can spark interest in some of the most reluctant writers in your group. Most children at this age have an interest in a particular sport. You can harness this topic of interest and turn it into a positive writing activity. Simply challenge children to take notes on a match or game that they watch over the coming week. This could be at a professional level or even a game in the school gym. Ask children to focus on the main highlights in the game (what happened, who won, star players etc.). Then invite them to bring these notes along to class in order to write up their full-length report.

8. Night Zookeeper

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More writing activities & prompts

• Grade 6 Picture Writing Prompts
• Grade 6 Writing Prompts
• Elementary Writing Prompts
• Elementary Writing Activities

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• Elementary Writing Curriculum
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