7 Ways to strengthen informational writing skills in the classroom

Informational writing is one of the most practical skills students carry beyond the classroom. From lab reports and research papers to job applications and news articles, the ability to convey facts clearly and logically is something your students will rely on for the rest of their lives.

Yet for many middle and high school teachers, informational writing instruction often takes a backseat to literary analysis and narrative assignments. Standards across grade levels call for students to write informative and explanatory texts, but finding engaging ways to teach the planning, research, and structural skills behind strong nonfiction writing isn’t always straightforward.

The good news? With the right activities and resources, informational writing doesn’t have to feel dry or formulaic. Below you’ll find seven classroom-ready activities designed to help your students build confidence in nonfiction writing — each one paired with ClickView video resources you can use to model concepts, spark discussion, and scaffold learning.

Why informational writing matters across grade levels

Informational writing, sometimes called expository or nonfiction writing, is a type of writing that conveys facts, explanations, or instructions to the reader. Overall, informational writing aims to educate and inform.

Your students already encounter informational texts everywhere: textbooks, how-to guides, scientific reports, news articles, and even the instructions on a recipe card. Teaching them to write these texts well builds strong research skills, sharpens their ability to organize ideas logically, and gives them practice communicating with clarity.

So how do you get students genuinely engaged with nonfiction writing? These seven activities offer a practical starting point.

7 practical activities to teach informational writing

1) Explore informational text types with video

Before students write informational texts, they need to understand what informational writing actually looks like in the real world. This activity uses short video clips to build a shared understanding of nonfiction text types and their purposes.

Start by screening Nonfiction Text Structures with your class. This short clip from the English Literature: Skills series breaks down the key organizational patterns found in nonfiction writing: comparison, cause and effect, problem and solution, sequence, and description. It’s a quick, effective way to give students a useful framework.

For a deeper dive with high school students, pair it with Nonfiction Text Features, which explores how elements like headings, captions, glossaries, and indexes support a reader’s understanding.

How to run this activity:

• Show one or both videos, then ask students to identify which nonfiction text structure they encounter most often in their other classes (science, social studies, health)
• Have students work in pairs to sort a collection of short nonfiction excerpts by structure type
• Discuss as a class: why do writers choose one structure over another? When would a compare-and-contrast structure serve better than a cause-and-effect structure?

This sets a strong foundation. When students recognize the structures as readers, they’re better equipped to use them as writers.

2) Map out a nonfiction text using graphic organizers

Strong informational writing starts with strong planning. This activity walks students through the process of outlining a nonfiction piece before they draft a single paragraph.

Screen Steps in the Writing Process to introduce (or review) the stages of planning, drafting, revising, and editing. Then shift the focus to the planning stage specifically.

For middle school students, Writing Expository Texts is a great companion; it walks through how expository writing is organized and what makes it effective. High school students working on more complex pieces benefit from English Basics: Using the PEEL Paragraph Method, which provides a replicable structure for analytical paragraphs: Point, Evidence, Explanation, Link.

How to run this activity:

• Give students a broad nonfiction topic (for example, the impact of social media on teenagers, the science of sleep, or how recycling works), or pose a question relevant to a specific topic recently covered in class
• Ask them to narrow the topic to a specific angle and identify their audience
• Using a graphic organizer, a web, an outline, or a T-chart, students map out their main idea and three to five supporting details or subtopics
• Encourage them to note where they’d need to find evidence or data to support each point

The goal here isn’t a polished draft. It’s giving students practice thinking like an informational writer: organized, evidence-driven, and audience-aware.

3) Evaluate and cite credible sources

You’ve probably seen it happen: a student submits a research-based piece citing a random blog post or an outdated website as their primary source. Teaching source evaluation alongside informational writing makes the research process more intentional.

ClickView’s How to Evaluate Sources for Reliability and How to Evaluate Sources for Relevance are short, student-friendly clips that walk through what makes a source trustworthy and how to determine if it’s actually useful for a specific topic. For a broader look at nonfiction research skills, Using Nonfiction Text Features helps students navigate informational texts more efficiently.

How to run this activity:

• After watching one or both evaluation videos, provide students with a set of four to six sources on a single topic — mix in some strong, credible sources alongside weaker ones (an opinion blog, an outdated article, a source with no author)
• Students work in small groups to rank the sources from most to least credible, justifying their reasoning
• Each group presents its ranking to the class, and the class discusses any disagreements
• Wrap up by having students practice writing a brief citation for their top two sources

This activity doubles as preparation for any research-based writing assignment. When students know how to vet their sources, the quality of their informational writing improves dramatically.

4) Write an expository or explanatory piece

Now it’s time for students to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). This activity focuses on writing a short expository or explanatory text — the bread and butter of informational writing.

Use Writing Explanatory Texts to model how explanatory writing works: how a writer introduces a topic, develops it with facts and details, and wraps up with a conclusion that reinforces the main idea.

How to run this activity:

• Ask students to choose a topic they know well, a hobby, a process they’ve mastered, or a subject they’ve studied in another class. Watch Researching Non-Fiction to consider the different ways their non fiction topic could be planned, researched and presented.
• Using the outline they created in Activity 2 (or a new one), students draft a short explanatory text of three to five paragraphs.
• Remind them to include an engaging introduction that establishes the topic, body paragraphs that each focus on one aspect, and a conclusion that ties it together. For an extension, students could create supporting visuals such as illustrations or diagrams
• Pair students for peer review, focusing on clarity: Does the reader understand the topic better after reading? How could the text be improved?

The key coaching point here is that informational writing doesn’t have to be boring. Encourage students to use vivid examples, interesting facts, and a conversational tone to keep their readers engaged, just like any good nonfiction author would.

5) Create an informational infographic

Not all informational writing lives in a traditional essay format. Infographics combine concise, informational text with visuals to communicate data and ideas quickly, and creating one is an excellent exercise in distilling complex information into clear, accessible language.

This cross-curricular activity works well alongside science, social studies, or health units. Students research a topic and then present their findings visually rather than in a traditional essay.

How to run this activity:

• Use Nailing Nonfiction: Common Text Types and Purpose of Nonfiction as an opener, encouraging students to review the possibilities of information texts while also noting the common language styles such texts employ.
• Assign students a topic or let them choose one connected to a current unit of study
• Students research the topic using credible sources (reinforcing the skills from Activity 3)
• Using a free digital tool like Canva, Piktochart, or Google Slides, students design an infographic that includes a clear title and subtitle, at least three key facts or data points supported by evidence, short explanatory text for each section (no more than two to three sentences per block), and proper source attribution
• Display finished infographics in the classroom or digitally, and allow time for a gallery walk where students give and receive feedback

What makes this activity powerful is the constraint: students have to be precise and purposeful with their word choices because space is limited. That’s informational writing at its most disciplined.

6) Write a nonfiction news article

News articles are one of the most recognizable forms of informational writing, and writing one gives students practice with a structure they encounter daily. This activity teaches the inverted pyramid — leading with the most important information and adding supporting details in descending order of importance.

To introduce news writing as a form of informational text, show What Are the Features of a Newspaper?, which breaks down the components students should recognize and replicate. For middle school students, What Are Facts and Opinions? is a useful companion piece that reinforces the importance of keeping informational writing factual and evidence-based.

How to run this activity:

• Assign each student or pair a recent school or community event to cover (a sports game, a school assembly, a local initiative)
• Students research the event, interview a participant or witness if possible, and draft a news article following the inverted pyramid structure
• Articles should include a headline, a byline, a lead paragraph answering who, what, when, where, and why, and two to three supporting paragraphs with quotes or data
• Publish finished articles in a class newspaper, a shared digital document, or on the school website

This is also a useful opportunity to discuss the difference between informational and persuasive writing (and where they can overlap!). Are there any sentences in their drafts where opinion has crept in? How do they spot it and revise?

7) Structure a research-based essay

For high school students especially, the research-based informational essay is a cornerstone of academic writing. This final activity brings together everything students have practiced: planning, source evaluation, nonfiction structure, and clear prose into a longer, more polished piece.

Three Ways to Structure a Comparative Essay from the English Essentials: Senior Secondary series is an excellent resource for older students. While it focuses on comparative essays, the structural strategies it teaches translate directly to organizing any research-based informational text. Pair it with Sentence Structure to help students vary their sentence length and complexity for a more polished final product.

How to run this activity:

• Assign a research-based informational essay on a topic connected to your current curriculum
• Students work through the full writing process: choosing and narrowing a topic, conducting research with credible sources, outlining, drafting, revising, and editing
• Set clear expectations for length (800 to 1,200 words is a solid range for high school), the number of sources required, and the citation format
• Build in a peer review stage using a checklist focused on informational writing: Is the thesis clear? Does each paragraph focus on one main point? Are claims supported by evidence? Is the tone objective?

For middle school students tackling their first longer research pieces, Writing Procedures and Writing Discussions offer accessible entry points into structured nonfiction writing that don’t require the same level of complexity as a full essay.

Tips for integrating informational writing into everyday lessons

You don’t need a standalone writing unit to build informational writing skills. Here are a few ways to weave nonfiction writing into your daily classroom routines:

• Use exit tickets as mini-writing prompts. Ask students to summarize what they learned in two to three sentences using informational writing conventions, no opinions, just facts, and clear explanations
• Assign cross-curricular writing. Collaborate with science or social studies teachers to have students write lab reports, historical summaries, or current event analyses as informational texts
• Build a class reference library. Have students contribute short informational articles on topics they’ve studied throughout the year. By the end of the semester, you’ll have a student-authored reference collection
• Practice revision regularly. Informational writing thrives on clarity. Dedicate class time to revising for precision, cutting unnecessary words, replacing vague language with specific details, and checking that every paragraph serves a purpose

Informational writing is a skill that grows with practice. The more opportunities your students have to research, organize, and communicate factual information, the stronger their writing becomes, not just in your class, but across every subject and well beyond graduation.

Sources

1. Graham, S. and Perin, D. (2007). Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.
2. National Center for Education Statistics (2012). The Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2011. Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.
3. Common Core State Standards Initiative (2010). English Language Arts Standards — Writing. Available at: http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/W/