✕

Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

What is instruction text?

Instruction text
We read instruction texts on an everyday basis. In primary school your child will be taught to recognise the main features and write increasingly complicated instruction texts as part of their non-fiction literacy work.

What is an instruction text?

An instruction text is a text that explains to someone how to do something, such as bake a cake, play a game or work a DVD player.

How are instruction texts taught in primary school?

Children will be shown a range of instruction texts, such as recipes, manuals and game instructions. They will discuss the features of instruction texts:
 

  • clear layout
  • a 'You will need' list which explains what ingredients or tools are required
  • numbered points
  • 'bossy' verbs (imperative verbs) such as 'put', 'take', 'mix', 'spread'
  • Instruction texts also often use time connectives at the start of each numbered point ('First', 'Next', 'Then' and 'Lastly').

In class, children may be given some instructions to follow and be asked to discuss how effective they are. This helps them to understand the importance of clear and comprehensive instructions.

Children will then be asked to draft their own instruction text. This could be related to something they are doing at school (for example, if they are making puppets, they might write an instruction text explaining how to do this). A teacher may give them a writing frame with boxes and numbers to help them set out their writing. Children will be asked to edit and improve their writing if they have forgotten any of the main features, or if some of their instructions do not make sense.

The aim of an instruction text is to be clear and concise, rather than descriptive.

As children move up the school, they may be expected to write more complicated instruction texts, with detailed labelled diagrams (for example, they may be asked to write an instruction text on how to use a camera).

Read our parents' guide for details of all non-fiction texts studied in primary school.