Year 6 Writing Activities

By Year 6, you might start to feel some resistance towards writing in favour of other activities, like video games and apps, as your primary school sudent 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 explanations to describe normal things to an alien who knows nothing about Earth. 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 explanations for everyday things that they would need to explain to an alien, such as how a car works, what a tree is, or how you eat food. You can also make these questions centered around education with, what do we learn at our school, how do you do subtraction, what are similes.
• Step 2: Find each child a partner. Assign one child the role of ‘alien’ and the other child the ‘explainer’.
• Step 3: The explainer describes the everyday thing to the alien using simple language and analogies. The alien, who knows nothing about Earth, can ask questions for clarification, encouraging the explainer to think creatively about their descriptions.
• Step 4: Leave some time at the end of the session to share some of the most interesting explanations and the questions that the aliens asked. This will help to highlight creative thinking and effective communication skills.

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 do some creative writing 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 conjure 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! This activity not only enhances creative writing but also helps children to progress in their collaborative writing skills.

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 on what its functionality was in the 2020’s and state why it was important to them. To add an element of story writing, encourage your child to create a narrative about the object's journey through time and its discovery by future generations. This activity can be a fun and reflective way to start the new year, as they think about what the future might hold.

5. Top Five!

A great way to personalize writing tasks is to ask children to write about things they love and are passionate about. To set up this home learning activity, begin by asking children to think about their ‘top five’ on a topic of their choice (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 and to build cohesion in their arguments.

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. 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. For example, create a fact file about players on the England soccer team, or how to do your times tables.

This approach can be implemented during the spring term and summer term to maintain engagement and variety in writing activities. By offering choices in different terms, you help sustain their interest and provide multiple opportunities for them to develop their creative writing and factual writing skills.

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.)and include statistics such as scores and percentages. Then invite them to bring these notes along to class in order to write up their full-length report.

To add an interesting twist, encourage children to cross-reference their observations with other reports or interviews related to the game. This cross-referencing will help them understand different perspectives and provide a more rounded report. Additionally, students could cross-check the statistics they noted with official records to ensure accuracy. This will teach them the importance of verifying information, a critical skill in both writing and research.

8. Night Zookeeper

Night Zookeeper makes writing fantastically fun for children aged six to twelve.

Our writing program for kids uses gamification to keep your child engaged and entertained as they learn. There are thousands of writing activities available right now, from word games, and writing challenges to printable worksheets and interactive lessons. We also provide feedback from real teachers on all of your child's work.

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More writing activities & prompts

• Year 6 Writing Prompts
• Creative Writing Prompts for Kids
• Primary Writing Prompts
• Primary Writing Activities
• Picture Writing Prompts

Related content

• Primary English
• Primary Writing Curriculum
• English Resources