ks2 book review success criteria

How to Write a Book Review: The Ultimate Guide

WHAT IS A BOOK REVIEW?

Traditionally, book reviews are evaluations of a recently published book in any genre. Usually, around the 500 to 700-word mark, they briefly describe a text’s main elements while appraising the work’s strengths and weaknesses. Published book reviews can appear in newspapers, magazines, and academic journals. They provide the reader with an overview of the book itself and indicate whether or not the reviewer would recommend the book to the reader.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF A BOOK REVIEW?

There was a time when book reviews were a regular appearance in every quality newspaper and many periodicals. They were essential elements in whether or not a book would sell well. A review from a heavyweight critic could often be the deciding factor in whether a book became a bestseller or a damp squib. In the last few decades, however, the book review’s influence has waned considerably, with many potential book buyers preferring to consult customer reviews on Amazon, or sites like Goodreads, before buying. As a result, book review’s appearance in newspapers, journals, and digital media has become less frequent.

WHY BOTHER TEACHING STUDENTS TO WRITE BOOK REVIEWS AT ALL?

Even in the heyday of the book review’s influence, few students who learned the craft of writing a book review became literary critics! The real value of crafting a well-written book review for a student does not lie in their ability to impact book sales. Understanding how to produce a well-written book review helps students to:

●     Engage critically with a text

●     Critically evaluate a text

●     Respond personally to a range of different writing genres

●     Improve their own reading, writing, and thinking skills.

Not to Be Confused with a Book Report!

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A BOOK REVIEW AND A BOOK REPORT?

While the terms are often used interchangeably, there are clear differences in both the purpose and the format of the two genres. Generally speaking, book reports aim to give a more detailed outline of what occurs in a book. A book report on a work of fiction will tend to give a comprehensive account of the characters, major plot lines, and themes in the book. Book reports are usually written around the K-12 age range, while book reviews tend not to be undertaken by those at the younger end of this age range due to the need for the higher-level critical skills required in writing them. At their highest expression, book reviews are written at the college level and by professional critics.

Learn how to write a book review step by step with our complete guide for students and teachers by familiarizing yourself with the structure and features.

BOOK REVIEW STRUCTURE

ANALYZE Evaluate the book with a critical mind.

THOROUGHNESS The whole is greater than the sum of all its parts. Review the book as a WHOLE.

COMPARE Where appropriate compare to similar texts and genres.

THUMBS UP OR DOWN? You are going to have to inevitably recommend or reject this book to potential readers.

BE CONSISTENT Take a stance and stick with it throughout your review.

FEATURES OF A BOOK REVIEW

PAST TENSE You are writing about a book you have already read.

EMOTIVE LANGUAGE Whatever your stance or opinion be passionate about it. Your audience will thank you for it.

VOICE Both active and passive voice are used in recounts.

A COMPLETE UNIT ON REVIEW AND ANALYSIS OF TEXTS

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ELEMENTS OF A BOOK REVIEW

As with any of the writing genres we teach our students, a book review can be helpfully explained in terms of criteria. While there is much to the ‘art’ of writing, there is also, thankfully, a lot of the nuts and bolts that can be listed too. Have students consider the following elements before writing:

●     Title: Often, the title of the book review will correspond to the title of the text itself, but there may also be some examination of the title’s relevance. How does it fit into the purpose of the work as a whole? Does it convey a message or reveal larger themes explored within the work?

●     Author: Within the book review, there may be some discussion of who the author is and what they have written before, especially if it relates to the current work being reviewed. There may be some mention of the author’s style and what they are best known for. If the author has received any awards or prizes, this may also be mentioned within the body of the review.

●     Genre: A book review will identify the genre that the book belongs to, whether fiction or nonfiction, poetry, romance, science-fiction, history etc. The genre will likely tie in, too with who the intended audience for the book is and what the overall purpose of the work is.

●     Book Jacket / Cover: Often, a book’s cover will contain artwork that is worthy of comment. It may contain interesting details related to the text that contribute to, or detract from, the work as a whole.

●     Structure: The book’s structure will often be heavily informed by its genre. Have students examine how the book is organized before writing their review. Does it contain a preface from a guest editor, for example? Is it written in sections or chapters? Does it have a table of contents, index, glossary etc.? While all these details may not make it into the review itself, looking at how the book is structured may reveal some interesting aspects.

●     Publisher and Price: A book review will usually contain details of who publishes the book and its cost. A review will often provide details of where the book is available too.

BOOK REVIEW KEY ELEMENTS

As students read and engage with the work they will review, they will develop a sense of the shape their review will take. This will begin with the summary. Encourage students to take notes during the reading of the work that will help them in writing the summary that will form an essential part of their review. Aspects of the book they may wish to take notes on in a work of fiction may include:

●     Characters: Who are the main characters? What are their motivations? Are they convincingly drawn? Or are they empathetic characters?

●     Themes: What are the main themes of the work? Are there recurring motifs in the work? Is the exploration of the themes deep or surface only?

●     Style: What are the key aspects of the writer’s style? How does it fit into the wider literary world?

●     Plot: What is the story’s main catalyst? What happens in the rising action? What are the story’s subplots? 

A book review will generally begin with a short summary of the work itself. However, it is important not to give too much away, remind students – no spoilers, please! For nonfiction works, this may be a summary of the main arguments of the work, again, without giving too much detail away. In a work of fiction, a book review will often summarise up to the rising action of the piece without going beyond to reveal too much!

The summary should also provide some orientation for the reader. Given the nature of the purpose of a review, it is important that students’ consider their intended audience in the writing of their review. Readers will most likely not have read the book in question and will require some orientation. This is often achieved through introductions to the main characters, themes, primary arguments etc. This will help the reader to gauge whether or not the book is of interest to them.

Once your student has summarized the work, it is time to ‘review’ in earnest. At this point, the student should begin to detail their own opinion of the book. To do this well they should:

i. Make It Personal

Often when teaching essay writing we will talk to our students about the importance of climbing up and down the ladder of abstraction. Just as it is helpful to explore large, more abstract concepts in an essay by bringing it down to Earth, in a book review, it is important that students can relate the characters, themes, ideas etc to their own lives.

Book reviews are meant to be subjective. They are opinion pieces, and opinions grow out of our experiences of life. Encourage students to link the work they are writing about to their own personal life within the body of the review. By making this personal connection to the work, students contextualize their opinions for the readers and help them to understand whether the book will be of interest to them or not in the process.

ii. Make It Universal

Just as it is important to climb down the ladder of abstraction to show how the work relates to individual life, it is important to climb upwards on the ladder too. Students should endeavor to show how the ideas explored in the book relate to the wider world. The may be in the form of the universality of the underlying themes in a work of fiction or, for example, the international implications for arguments expressed in a work of nonfiction.

iii. Support Opinions with Evidence

A book review is a subjective piece of writing by its very nature. However, just because it is subjective does not mean that opinions do not need to be justified. Make sure students understand how to back up their opinions with various forms of evidence, for example, quotations, statistics, and the use of primary and secondary sources.

EDIT AND REVISE YOUR BOOK REVIEW

As with any writing genre, encourage students to polish things up with review and revision at the end. Encourage them to proofread and check for accurate spelling throughout, with particular attention to the author’s name, character names, publisher etc. 

It is good practice too for students to double-check their use of evidence. Are statements supported? Are the statistics used correctly? Are the quotations from the text accurate? Mistakes such as these uncorrected can do great damage to the value of a book review as they can undermine the reader’s confidence in the writer’s judgement.

The discipline of writing book reviews offers students opportunities to develop their writing skills and exercise their critical faculties. Book reviews can be valuable standalone activities or serve as a part of a series of activities engaging with a central text. They can also serve as an effective springboard into later discussion work based on the ideas and issues explored in a particular book. Though the book review does not hold the sway it once did in the mind’s of the reading public, it still serves as an effective teaching tool in our classrooms today.

Teaching Resources

Use our resources and tools to improve your student’s writing skills through proven teaching strategies.

BOOK REVIEW GRAPHIC ORGANIZER (TEMPLATE)

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Book and Movie review writing examples (Student Writing Samples)

Below are a collection of student writing samples of book reviews.  Click on the image to enlarge and explore them in greater detail.  Please take a moment to both read the movie or book review in detail but also the teacher and student guides which highlight some of the key elements of writing a text review

Please understand these student writing samples are not intended to be perfect examples for each age or grade level but a piece of writing for students and teachers to explore together to critically analyze to improve student writing skills and deepen their understanding of book review writing.

We would recommend reading the example either a year above and below, as well as the grade you are currently working with to gain a broader appreciation of this text type .

BOOK REVIEW VIDEO TUTORIALS

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Writing a book review in KS2

How do you write a book review in KS2?

Writing a book review in Key Stage 2 (KS2) involves summarising the book, giving your opinion, and recommending it to others. Teacher's use different methods and prompts to encourage children to build upon their review-writing skills and present their review in a clear and comprehensive format. 

What are the four steps to writing a book review in KS2?

• Start with the basics
• Title and author Encourage your child to begin by stating the title of the book and the author’s name.
• Genre   They can mention the type of book it is, like adventure, mystery or fantasy.  
• Summarise the story
• Overview Ask your child to give a brief summary of the story, covering the main characters, setting and key events without giving away the ending or important twists.  
• Share their opinion
• Likes and dislikes Help them talk about what they liked and didn’t like. This could be anything from the storyline and characters to the illustrations and the way the author writes.
• Favourite parts Encourage them to mention their favourite part of the book and why it stood out to them.  
• Make a recommendation
• Who would like this book They can suggest who might enjoy the book, such as children who like exciting adventures or funny stories.
• Rating It’s fun to give the book a rating out of 5 stars to show how much they enjoyed it.

How will this book review template help your KS2 child?

This teacher-created book review template will help your child practise their review writing skills at home. They will be able to use the structure and the prompts within the template to create a book review and build their confidence with this style of activity, which they will almost certainly come across at school. 

For more support with KS2 English, check out our hub page , or try a new challenge such as our Year 4 proofreading worksheet. 

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5 benefits of writing a book review in ks2, writing book reviews might be a classroom staple, but have you truly considered why they’re so beneficial to a child’s learning.

Contrary to popular belief, writing a book review isn’t a test of knowledge – nor should they be used to ‘prove’ that a book has been read.

It is, of course, quite difficult to review a book without reading it first. However, reducing this task to a mere confirmation tactic would be a wasted opportunity; it has a whole lot more to offer your little learners.

If you’re not sure of the wider benefits that writing book reviews can bring, don’t worry – we’ve summarised our top five below.

1. Nifty Notetaking 

2. Competent Critical Thinking 

Writing a book review is a chance to examine literature and digest it in a more complex way than simply following the story and understanding its plot.

Compile a list of questions to help children think critically about the book they’re reading and draw conclusions based on both facts and feelings.

For example:

• Are the characters believable? Are they somebody you would like to meet in real life?
• Do you like author’s writing style and how they use words?
• What emotions did you feel when you read the book? Which passages made you feel this way?
• Did you feel satisfied by the story’s ending?

3. Reliable Research

Learning how to properly research a topic is another skill that will serve your pupils well throughout their education.

To add further context to a review, ask the class to do a little research into the author of their chosen book. Using the author’s website, for example, could tell you about their life and other books they’ve written.

Does this make you understand the book any better or think about it differently?

4. Riveting Reflection

5. Impressive Influence

Peer recommendation is powerful.

When a book is positively received by a child, it’s likely to be considered by their friends – it’s the same simple science that we find with any kind of review, and a benefit that the whole class can enjoy.

Searching for More Fun Ideas to Engage your Class with Story Writing?

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James Durran

Occasional posts on teaching, English and literacy

Re-thinking ‘success criteria’: a simple device to support pupils’ writing

Colleagues and I have been working with primary schools to develop an alternative to listed ‘success criteria’ for writing, which we call ‘boxed’ or ‘expanding success criteria’ (or often just ‘the rectangles thing.’) It is very easy to adopt, and teachers have been finding that it can transform how writing is talked about and approached in the classroom, with an immediate impact on the quality of what pupils are producing. (That is something which we now need to research properly!)

When approaching a piece of writing, pupils are often given ‘success criteria’ in the form of a list of features which the writing ‘requires’ in order to be successful. These often include technicalities such as full stops and commas; they may include features such as metaphors, adjectives for description, varied sentence openers and so on; and they tend to include grammatical or cohesive devices, such as time adverbials, subordinate clauses or relative pronouns. In this way, they are tied explicitly to particular curriculum and teaching ‘objectives’.

These lists of ingredients clearly have usefulness – for reminding pupils of some things they might do to make the writing effective, for reinforcing learning, for providing a ready checklist for self and peer assessment, and so on. But teachers are increasingly aware of their potential drawbacks:

• They can promote a ‘writing-by-numbers’ approach, in which writing becomes a performance of features rather than a coherent whole.
• They can encourage teaching and task-setting by narrow text type, limiting the scope of what pupils might achieve.
• They are not really success criteria: the success of a piece of actual writing can only be measured by how well it communicates or achieves its purpose for its intended reader, not by whether it contains specified ingredients.
• Feedback – at the end or while drafting and editing – can therefore tend to focus just on whether specific elements are included, rather than on how effective the writing is as writing .*

Together, these interrelated factors can work against pupils’ development as real writers, writing for real purposes and real audiences. By ‘real’, we don’t mean a real life situation, like a letter to the school governors, or a story to be published, although there is an important place for such tasks; we mean an imagined but specific and authentic purpose and audience.

Purpose and audience: the starting point for teaching

If pupils are to write a recipe, it is simple and easy to give them a list like this:

• Lists of ingredients and equipment
• Numbered steps
• Time and sequence adverbials
• Imperative or command verbs

Certainly, these things are a useful starting point. But ask pupils then to compare the following two fragments, each giving exactly the same instruction …

Add Worcester sauce for extra flavour.

Slosh in some Worcester sauce to make it even yummier.

… and suddenly there is much more to consider and to teach. Who is the recipe for? Other children? A professional chef? Grandparents? What do they want and need? How can we engage them? What sort of verbs, nouns and adjectives might we therefore use? And so on. This is much more interesting for pupils. It is certainly more fun to teach.

It is important to teach about genre and about the features of different kinds of writing. But teachers know that, when pupils move on from thinking just in terms of text type, their writing opens up, with much more potential for richness, variety and authenticity. An account of a trip – perhaps in the form of an article – is not just a ‘recount’: it can be engagingly descriptive; it will have elements of entertaining narrative; it is likely to involve explanation, and even elements of persuasion and argument. Similarly a brochure about a town should be much more than a ‘non-chronological report’: depending on the intended audience, it will modulate between and blend elements of description, narrative, explanation, instruction and persuasion.

Purpose and audience: the starting point for feedback

Thinking about how to move on the pupil writing this story opening, it is easy to start listing technical or stylistic devices.

Billy went into the house. He looked into the kitchen. He saw a big dog. The dog ran to him.

The child could use more conjunctions, and perhaps a fronted adverbial or two. She could add description, using adjectives and adverbs. Perhaps she could expand some noun-phrases.

But, of course, the first question to ask this child is not ‘Could you use some…?’ or ‘Can you add in…?’ It is, simply: ‘What sort of story is this, and how do you want the reader to feel?’ Then things move forward. If it is a scary story, then perhaps the verb ‘went’ could be replaced by a scarier verb, with a scary adverb, such as ‘crept slowly’. Meanwhile, ‘looked’ could become ‘peered nervously’. The kitchen could be ‘dark and shadowy’. The dog could be ‘lion-like’ and it could ‘charge’ rather than ‘run’. The last sentence could be fronted with ‘Suddenly,…’ If it is a sad story, he might ‘walk slowly’ into the house, the kitchen could be ‘gloomy’. If it is happy, then he might ‘skip’ and the dog might ‘bounce’ up to him. And so on.

The ‘boxed’ or ‘expanding’ success criteria

So traditional ‘success criteria’ are really the wrong way round. They define ‘success’ in terms of the presence of ingredients, not in terms of the actual point of the writing.

The boxed criteria keep the ingredients, but link them explicitly to purpose and to the reader. It’s really that simple. In the middle, pupils put what the writing is and its intended audience; outwards from this are the intended ‘effects’ on that audience, or what the writing is meant to provide for its readers; outwards again are the ingredients – the features which might help to achieve these things.

For example, a guide for children to looking after a chosen pet animal might be planned like this:

The ‘boxed success criteria’ for the story (above) of Billy entering the house might look like this:

Note that in this example the ingredients are themselves described in terms of their impact: ‘scary nouns’, ‘frightening adjectives’ and ‘spooky similes’. Grammatical forms should be used for a reason, not for their own sake.

The grid might be created by the teacher and given to the pupils. It is more likely, however, that it will be constructed out of discussion with the class, and out of their reading and picking apart of examples. In the example below, for a description of what lies behind a mysterious door, the ingredients have come directly from discussion of an example text, and the outermost layer has been used for assembling examples of language.

Pupils might have their own grid in their books. (In the one below, the school has kept the label of ‘success criteria’ for the ingredients layer, to ease the transition to a new format!)

Or there might be a big class one on the wall.

Either way, it can be a dynamic, evolving thing, added to and adjusted as ideas are developed and shared through the planning, drafting and editing stages of writing. This is a tool which can live with the piece of writing through its stages: from reading and exploring examples, to planning and assembling ideas, to drafting and editing, to proof-reading, to publication, to reflection. And of course, at every stage, the starting point for teacher, peer or self-assessment and feedback is not a list of ingredients, but whether the writing is achieving what it is meant to achieve.

There is nothing radical or intrinsically innovative about this. It is just a visual device for focusing the thinking of teachers and pupils on what writing is actually about: communication and effect, not just the performance of skills.

___________________________

* In the article Objectives and purpose in English , I wrote this about the hazards of misapplied success criteria:

In their 2014 report for CfBT on educational blogging and its effects on writing, Myra Barrs and Sarah Horrocks noted a discrepancy between primary teachers’ views of what makes ‘good writing’ and that of their pupils. The teachers valued “good content and ideas”, “real meaning and purpose”, “imagination, originality and creativity”, “fluency and momentum” and “a strong sense of a reader/audience.” In contrast, pupils’ conception of ‘good writing’ “reflected the teachers’ marking of their books, and the learning objectives and targets that they were used to: ‘It would need ‘wow’ words to impress me’; ‘Good sentences full of adjectives’; ‘Describing. Good punctuation’; ‘Vocabulary that catches attention’ ‘Description and similes.’”

Pupils tend to define success in terms of such mechanistic attributes because these – rather than the real purposes of reading, writing or talking – are so often the starting point in lessons. They also dominate the checklists of ‘success criteria’ given to children when they embark on tasks. A description will be ‘successful’ not if it ‘makes the reader feel as though they are there’ but if it contains at least one metaphor, at least one simile, some adjectives, and so on. A persuasive letter will be successful not if it is ‘powerful’ but if it contains all the elements of ‘AFOREST’ or ‘SPEARFACTOR’. And a response to a poem will be successful not if it convinces or is interesting, but if it contains P.E.E. paragraphs, quotations and at least three ideas. All of these elements may be useful, but they are ingredients not recipes. Checklists of features can limit, rather than raise, attainment, if they are allowed to define success.

It is often easy to spot where such features are being deployed by children, keen to ‘move up a level’ rather than, perhaps, to be real writers. In this piece, a Year 5 boy steeped in the excitable rhythms and language of football reports, writes:

All the fans were booing around the ground. We got a free kick. Our striker was taking it. He whipped it past the wall. We were level at half time. He celebrated by sliding on his knees. The goal was fantastic to watch – curved it to the top corner, wow! The ref blew his whistle for half time. The fans were singing.

Redrafting it, he dutifully writes in more detail, adds description and uses more adjectives, with ruinous results.

All the fans booing really loud around the ground. We got a free kick. The striker was number 10 and had orange boots. He took a run up at the football. He struck it. It went around the wall and went into the top corner. The player celebrated by sliding on his knees through the wet green grass. It was nearly half time. We were levelling. The ref blew his whistle for half time. The manager gave the number 10 a high five. The team went into the big changing room to talk about the plan for the next half.

For years, I have used in training an extract from a Year 7 girl’s writing, which I was given by Simon Wrigley. In her first draft, she introduces the reader to her main character like this.

His mates called him Flash Harry because he was a rich photographer who liked to flash his cash around. They weren’t really his friends, of course, because he was too horrible to have any friends. He had yellow teeth and always smelt of beer. He was also very rude.

In her second draft, she ‘improves’ her description.

His friends called him Flash Harry as he was a wealthy photographer who loved showing off his money. They were not really his friends due to the fact that he was an extremely rude alcoholic with yellowing teeth.

The feedback that she was given on her draft, the objectives that she was chasing and the ‘success criteria’ that she was following are long lost. However, it is quite fun to guess. What is very clear is the way that her second draft, although ticking off such ‘higher-level’ features as more sophisticated language (‘wow words’?), a more formal register and more varied connectives, has lost the vitality and the narrative richness of the first. A great piece of real story-telling has become a performance of skills, dislocated from real purpose.

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23 thoughts on “ re-thinking ‘success criteria’: a simple device to support pupils’ writing ”.

Please can you tell me which text you used to lead to the ‘Behind the door’ boxed success criteria example? I found these ideas really inspirational. Thank you.

Hi. Thanks! It was an abridged version of Alice in Wonderland, but I can’t remember which one now! I’ll try to find out.

Thank you. I’ve been feeling this too (writing to a checklist can deaden and stifle the writer’s voice) and will try out your ideas.

This is fab. Thanks for sharing!

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Thanks James – This is a great approach and I successfully tried it with my class here in Tokoroa, New Zealand this week – so much more meaningful and user-friendly than We are Learning to’s and a list of success criteria.

I really love the boxed approche, I will certainly try it in my french class. The only hesitation I have is that my curriculum has different categories : Knowledge and Understanding, Thinking, Communication and Application. How would you go about to include these in the boxed technique ? Or would it be better to not bother and focus on the text as a whole ? Thanks again for the great post, I don’t really know how I happened to find it, but I’m glad I did! Bye Alex Ottawa, Canada

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I was introduced to your idea of rectangles by the Devon literacy team. I have been trialling it my year 1/2 class and have found that we are much more focussed on the purpose of the text and how it comes across to the reader. I am about to plan a unit of poetry and wondered what your views were on the purpose of poetry. My poem tells people about the things that happen in Spring but why would I do it in poem format and not just sentences or an information text? Am I over thinking purpose?

Ha! Good question. I suppose it’s about how they want the reader to… – feel about spring – realise things about Spring that they’d never noticed before – hear the sounds of spring in the words – enjoy the sounds of the poems – its rhythm, for example – enjoy words working in new or surprising ways – be made to pay attention – be surprised by what they’re reading

…and so on.

Obviously you’d be selective! But the point would be to think about what a poem does for a reader (and, of course, for a writer) that prose doesn’t. I suspect that something about enjoying the sound of the words, or enjoying new ways of looking at things (similes/metaphors?) might work best.

Let me know how it goes!

Splendid work, Mr Durran. Will certainly be keen to use the “boxed” approach when working on writing.

• Pingback: Reading as writers; writing as readers: an account of a Year 5/6 teaching sequence – James Durran

Stumbled across this on a ‘sunny, Sunday afternoon’. Looking to use it with explanation texts with a P5 class. Purpose will be to explain how a device works or a phenomenon happens and the reader will depend on what the device or phenomenon is. Effect on the audience – I am assuming it would be they will have a clear understanding how something works and will be able to operate the device if need be or explain to someone else how to work it. They will not be confused. Have I missed anything?

Yes – that sounds good. The question will be: what other purposes, alongside those, might there be? Does it also need to engage the reader? Does it need to reassure them? Does it need to be a bit persuasive – to get across how great the device is? That will all depend on the audience and context…

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We have now fully embedded the boxed success criteria device across our school – it is going really well!

That’s great! It either be good to see some examples…

I love the idea of this!

Does anybody have an example of how they have used the boxed success criteria for a non-chronological report? We are researching the Egyptians and then writing a report.

Can I ask where WAGOLLs come into it. Would you show an example upfront then use the box technique to unpick? Many thanks, so inspired by this. I

Hi. Yes, definitely. Explore examples and assemble the boxes out of reading. And keep adding. Glad it’s seeming of value!

This has made such a difference in how my students are approaching their writing! It’s revolutionary!I’ve never found it easy to introduce to students about audience and purpose for writing but this makes it so clear!

Thanks – that’s brilliant to hear!

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• Success Criteria Strategies For Developing Writing Skills In The Classroom

Success criteria – strategies for developing writing skills in the classroom

Criteria for descriptive writing can be restrictive for pupils – but they can be easily expanded, says James Durran…

When approaching a piece of writing, pupils are often given ‘success criteria’ in the form of a list of features which the writing ‘requires’ in order to be successful.

However, colleagues and I have been working with primary schools to develop an alternative to listed success criteria for writing, which we call ‘boxed’ or ‘expanded success criteria’.

It is very easy to adopt, and teachers have been finding that it can transform how writing is discussed and approached in the classroom, with an immediate impact on the quality of what pupils are producing.

Current criteria are tied explicitly to particular curriculum and teaching ‘objectives’, and often include technicalities such as full stops and commas; may include features such as metaphors, adjectives for description, varied sentence openers and so on; and they tend to include grammatical or cohesive devices , such as time adverbials, subordinate clauses or relative pronouns.

These ingredients can be useful, such as reminding pupils of things they might do to make the writing effective, reinforcing learning, providing a ready checklist for self and peer assessment, and so on. But teachers are increasingly aware of their potential drawbacks:

• They can promote a ‘writing-by-numbers’ approach, in which writing becomes a performance of features rather than a coherent whole.
• They can encourage teaching and task-setting by narrow text type, limiting the scope of what pupils might achieve.
• They are not really success criteria. The success of a piece of actual writing can only be measured by how well it communicates or achieves its purpose for its intended reader, not by whether it contains specified ingredients.
• Feedback – at the end or while drafting and editing – can therefore tend to focus just on whether specific elements are included, rather than on how effective the writing is as a complete piece.

Together, these interrelated factors can work against pupils’ development as real writers, writing for specific, authentic purpose and audiences .

Read the room

If pupils are writing a recipe, it is simple and easy to give them a list of components including, for example, ingredients and equipment; numbered steps; time and sequence adverbials; imperative or command verbs.

And these components are a useful starting point. But if you then ask children to compare the following two fragments, which each give the same instruction:

Add Worcester sauce for extra flavour. Slosh in some Worcester sauce to make it even yummier.

Suddenly there is much more to consider. Now, questions such as ‘Who is the recipe for?’ , ‘What do they want and need?’ , ‘How can we engage them?’ and ‘What sort of verbs, nouns and adjectives might we therefore use?’ come up.

Although this might sound like more work, it is much more interesting for pupils, and is certainly more fun to teach!

It is important to teach about genre and the features of different kinds of writing. But as teachers we know that when pupils move on from thinking just in terms of text type, their writing opens up, with much more potential for richness, variety and authenticity.

For example, an account of a trip – perhaps in the form of an article – is not just a ‘recount’. It can be engagingly descriptive, will have elements of entertaining narrative, is likely to involve explanation, and even elements of persuasion and argument.

Similarly, a brochure about a town should be much more than a ‘non-chronological report’. Depending on the intended audience, it will modulate between and blend elements of description, narrative, explanation, instruction and persuasion.

When considering how to help a pupil develop a story opening, it is easy to start listing technical or stylistic devices. For example:

Billy went into the house. He looked into the kitchen. He saw a big dog. The dog ran to him.

But the first question to ask this child is not ‘Could you use some…?’ or ‘Can you add in…?’ It is, simply, ‘What sort of story is this, and how do you want the reader to feel?’ . Then things move forward.

Boxed criteria in practice

Traditional ‘success criteria’ are really the wrong way round. They define ‘success’ in terms of the presence of ingredients, not in terms of the actual point of the writing.

Boxed criteria keep the ingredients, but link them explicitly to purpose and to the reader. It’s really that simple.

In the middle, pupils put what type of writing they’re doing and its intended audience; outwards from this are the intended ‘effects’ on that audience, or what the writing is meant to provide for its readers; outwards again are the ingredients – the features which might help to achieve these things.

Note that in this example the ingredients are themselves described in terms of their impact: ‘scary nouns’, ‘frightening adjectives’ and ‘spooky similes’. Grammatical forms should be used for a reason, not for their own sake.

You might create these boxes yourself and give them to the children. It is more likely, however, that the class will construct them together through discussion, and reading and picking apart examples.

Ultimately, there is nothing radical or intrinsically innovative about this method. It is just a visual device for focusing the thinking of teachers and pupils on what writing is actually about: communication and effect, not just the performance of skills.

Pupils might have their own grid in their books, which can be easily replicated through a simple template. (You can create this in a Word document and keep it handy for the children to stick into their books).

Or, you might decide to have a big class one on the wall. This can be drawn onto the whiteboard, or constructed as part of a classroom display.

A fun way to mix up the boxes is to print out examples of sentences in texts you like and stick them up on the board with an image.

Either way, it can be a dynamic, evolving thing, added to and adjusted as ideas are developed and shared through the planning, drafting and editing stages of writing.

This is a tool which can live with the piece of writing through its stages: from reading and exploring examples, to planning and assembling ideas, drafting and editing, proof-reading, all the way through to publication and reflection.

And of course, at every stage, the starting point for teacher, peer or self-assessment and feedback is not a list of ingredients, but whether the writing is achieving what it is meant to achieve.

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Success Criteria - making predictions

Subject: English

Age range: 7-11

Resource type: Other

Last updated

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Success Criteria Grids

A collection of success criteria grids used for self/peer/teacher assessment across a selection of genres in writing

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samina123samina

If I could give 0 stars I would. This is absolutely rubbish. I expected a prediction lesson

Sorry you feel this way, however it does state that it is a simple success criteria for assessment and it shows exactly what it is in the preview. At no point does it state that it is a lesson and I only put on resources I have previously found useful in the past as part of a lesson on making predictions

Empty reply does not make any sense for the end user

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