How To Teach Informational Writing in 11 Steps

Informational writing is one of many types of writing students will be asked to do in school. This type of writing spans all subjects—from ELA, to social studies, science, and beyond. To help you guide students when writing their informational pieces, we’re providing 11 steps on how to teach informational writing in any class so you feel confident in assigning, grading, and guiding your students in these lessons.

• 11 steps to teach informational writing
• Informational writing FAQs

[11 steps to teach informational writing](id-steps)

Use these steps to help your students understand how to research information and write an informational essay that teaches the audience something new:

1. Teach students about plagiarism

Because informational writing focuses on sharing information and ideas, it’s easier for students to plagiarize these types of assignments, even if they don’t mean to. When sharing information, it can be hard to think about how to make their piece sound different from the sources they read or watch to learn about the topic. A lesson in plagiarism and how to avoid it can help.

Explain to students that plagiarism is using someone else’s words, ideas, or media without giving them credit. To help them understand why you want to avoid plagiarism, propose a scenario that increases empathy and understanding, like:

“How would you feel if you made a cool TikTok and someone else posted it, the video went viral, and you didn’t get any credit?”

After discussing how students would feel in this situation, you can teach them what they can do to avoid plagiarism in their writing. Teaching or reinforcing how to summarize a text is a helpful tip and tool for students to use to avoid plagiarism.

2. Give examples of good informational writing

Mentor texts that are good examples of informational writing can help show students the structure and components of this type of piece. The best informational mentor texts come from real publications, like newspaper articles, textbooks, or journal articles. 

To be most effective, students should do more than just read the mentor texts. They should also analyze them. Students should look for places where the authors state facts, share statistics, and define vocabulary words. They can also compare mentor texts on similar topics to see how different authors share information on the same subject. 

Download your printable: Comparing multiple sources graphic organizer

3. Teach students how to find the main idea and key details in a text

Teaching students about main idea and key details is critical to helping them research for their informational writing assignments. You can share a main idea and details graphic organizer with students to help them record the main idea and key details of the mentor texts you share, and when they’re researching for their informational writing assignments.

You can also check out our blog posts on main idea and key details for more tips on how to help students grasp these concepts.

4. Share the informational writing prompt and rubric early

Sharing the writing activity prompt and rubric early in the lesson or unit can help students get familiar with the topic. Informational writing is a great chance to incorporate student choice into your assignments. Give your students the opportunity to write about their interests, hobbies, or wonderings. For example, you may give guidelines within your prompt rather than a direct prompt, like:

• Share the story of your favorite sports team’s founding and first season.
• Write a biography of your favorite author.
• Explain what your favorite app does.

By making room for student choice, you may increase their engagement and excitement for doing the project.

Sharing the rubric early also helps students prepare for grading later in the process. By sharing the criteria and expectations for the assignment, they can use it as a guide when planning and writing their essays.

The Newsela Writing Library has a host of informational writing assignments with attached prompts and rubrics that you can assign early to help students prepare for their writing activities.

5. Encourage students to start planning

After students have had time to look over the prompt and rubric, they can start planning their piece. Sharing a research essay outline gives students a place to list what information they want to share and discuss in each section of the essay.

You can model how to use this graphic organizer on a smartboard or overhead to help students consider what they should fill in for each section and the decision-making and research processes used to get there.

6. Show students how to research their informational topics

Informational texts rely on facts, definitions, and other data to give readers an overview of a topic. It’s important to teach students research skills and how to find high-quality resources to use in their writing. Some options you can show them include:

• Primary sources: Diary entries, letters, and audio and video recordings of speeches provide firsthand accounts of historical events.
• Journal article databases: Websites like JSTOR or EBSCO can help students find peer-reviewed academic articles, charts, graphs, and other resources for research.
• Reference materials: Encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, and other reference materials (in hard copy or online) can help students gather information and validate facts.
• Current events content: Articles and podcast recordings from trustworthy, verifiable sources can help students collect information from multiple viewpoints on a specific topic or issue.

7. Practice writing informational essays section by section

Practicing writing section by section can help students learn how to craft an informational text. The main sections to cover include:

• Intro/Thesis: This section sets up the rest of the text. It orients the reader to the topic and lays out what they can expect as they continue to read.
• Body: This section addresses important points about the topic that a reader should know to be fully informed.
• Conclusion: This section references the thesis again, summarizes the main points, and gives the reader information about what to do next or how to investigate further.

Create mini-lessons that help students learn how to write each part of an informational essay. You can teach the mini-lesson for the first part of the class period and use the rest of the time to work on the sections of their own papers independently. Independent work time is an opportunity for students to practice, ask questions, and conduct research.

How can Newsela Writing help with informational writing practice?

Newsela Writing has a sentence checklist and rubric meters to help students evaluate their own informational writing. Sentence checklists for these types of assignments might include:

• Explanation
• Main idea
• Background
• Reference text
• Summary (Optional)

For short-form assignments, sentence checklists also define the sentence types, tips for writing each type of sentence, and examples to see how this sentence type functions in an essay.

Newsela Writing also includes rubric meters that pair with the rubric attached to the assignment for students to monitor how well they’re meeting the rubric criteria. For informational essays, these meters may include:

• Main idea
• Reference to the text
• Explanation

8. Teach students about references and how to cite sources

Return to your earlier lesson about plagiarism to teach students about the importance of using references and citing sources in their informational writing. Teach students about the different types of citations, like:

• In-text citations
• Reference lists or bibliographies
• Footnotes
• Quote attributions
• Hyperlinks

You can also explain the different types of style guides to follow to create these references like:

• MLA
• APA
• Chicago

If you expect students to use a specific style guide or format for their references, demonstrate how to find, cite, and acknowledge a source before encouraging them to practice on their own.

9. Have students complete rough drafts and collect feedback

When students are familiar and comfortable with writing each section of their informational essays, they should then put them together into a complete rough draft. Within the draft, they can work on making transitions between sections to make sure their ideas flow and connect across each part of the essay.

When the rough draft is complete, students can turn it in to receive feedback from you, or you can set up peer review workshop sessions to have students edit and comment on each other’s work.

Download your printable: Peer feedback form

10. Ask students to revise their informational essays and polish their final drafts

After receiving feedback from teachers, peers, or a writing program like Newsela Writing, students should revise their rough drafts into polished, finished copies. These revisions may include rewriting sentences for clarity, fixing spelling and grammar errors, or reorganizing sentences and paragraphs for flow.

Students should also use this time to self-reflect on their work. They can use the rubric as a guide to make sure they haven’t missed a key area of the assignment. When revisions are complete, students should submit their final draft copies for a grade.

11. Publish or present students’ informational essays

After submission and grading, give students the opportunity to share or display their work. This could include hanging their essays up in the classroom or hallway, encouraging them to submit their essays to the school paper, or taking them home to share with family members.

Another way to share student work is to look out for Newsela Writing Contests. A few times per year, we invite students to share their best work in a variety of genres for a chance to become published authors on our platform. Check out the winners from our 2025 Winter Writing Contest about Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy.

[Informational writing FAQs](id-faq)

Have questions about teaching and practicing informational writing in your classes? Find answers, tips, and resources below:

What is informational writing?

Informational writing, also called informative or expository writing, shares facts, information, and insights about a topic. Informational texts are factual and free of bias or persuasion. Examples of informational writing include:

• Current event newspaper articles
• Textbooks
• Biographies

Is teaching informational writing the same across all grade bands?

While there are consistencies in how to teach informational writing across grade bands, older students are often expected to write longer, more nuanced informational texts than younger students. Some factors of informational writing that may change by grade band include:

• Length of assignment: High school students are often asked to complete multi-page research papers, where elementary students may write an informational paragraph.
• Topic complexity: Older students may write about more complex topics across subject areas because they have more background knowledge than younger students.
• Research: Older students are expected to do more research for their informational writing assignments. Teachers may give younger students reference materials or provide more scaffolding during the research process.
• Rubrics and criteria: Older students may have more guidelines and criteria to follow to create an outstanding informational writing assignment because of the length and complexity of their texts.

Should informational writing follow the five-paragraph format?

The five-paragraph essay format—with an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion—is a common format for in-school writing. It gives students clear directions of how much information to include in each piece.

Outside the classroom, good writing doesn’t have to fit into five paragraphs. The goal is to have the text be clear, concise, and informative. While you can use the five-paragraph format, you can also use shorter assignments, like a single summary paragraph. Alternatively, you could have students write long research papers with multiple paragraphs for the intro, body, and conclusion.

The format you choose should fit the task and grading criteria for the project. It should account for the amount of time students have to work on it in and out of class, and their knowledge and ability levels of the writing process.

Nurture confident writers with Newsela Writing

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