Biographies of Henry VIII
22 Oct 2021
Over the last few weeks, we have been working on biographies in our English work.
We began by looking at good quality examples of biographies, those that were written about Roald Dahl, Usain Bolt, JK Rowling and others. We quickly identified the audience and purpose for these pieces of writing, and went on to look at the specific features of them.
We noted many things that biographies have to be or include, such as: being in past tense, written in third person, being written in chronological order, including time conjunctions for cohesion, the use of dates and inclusion of factual information; the list goes on! We focused on a number of these in our grammar and punctuation lessons, so that we could ensure that our writing would be the best that it could be.
When it came to planning, we knew we would need to research into Henry VIII's life a little more, and we learnt lots about researching in a reliable way. We used a planning sheet to plan out what we were going to include about Henry VIII where, always making sure it was in chronological order.
The children decided on their own audience and purpose, and considered how they would want the reader to feel when reading their biography. Once they had decided that, they decided what features they would include to ensure the reader felt that way. As well as this, as a class we decided on a set of success criteria that we all needed to hit to make sure our writing was a (good) biography.
The children then began to write, and have produced some excellent pieces of writing.
When they had finished writing, they edited and improved it with their purple pens. They assessed their work against the success criteria and against their purpose and audience.
I am really proud of the children for their writing this half term, and I can't wait to see what they can do next half term! Have a lovely holiday everyone.