Do children still write about what they did at the weekend?

[letsgomaths]

I remember this being a typical Monday task at primary school, and I'm guessing it still is. If so, what things have children written about doing at the weekend that made you smile?

As a child, I was curious about the mechanics of school tasks such as this. I remember this being an unstructured activity: we'd be given the task on a Monday morning in year 6, but not given any other instructions. Would this have been a way of assessing our free writing, or a way of easing us into the week? I used to write about things that mattered to me: what Lego I played with, describing something I saw on TV in a lot of detail, and I used to quote things people said. I often didn't say anything about where we went, what family activities we did, which is what I guess I was really supposed to write about!

I used to make up what I'd done at the weekend because I knew it was boring
We did the same things most weekends when I was a child.

@Inglenooks I'm sure you're right about me mistakenly thinking that primary school now is just how I remembered it. I did volunteer in a primary school in my early twenties, and noticed some differences then already. I seem to have a more vivid memory for childhood than many people my age (another reason I thought diary writing was a pointless exercise). When I saw some of my peers at a school reunion, I remembered loads of things they didn't. I somehow recall really obscure things, such as that my teacher wrote "haberdashery" at the top of a list of items to use in a maths shopping exercise. I was fascinated by the word, and didn't know what it meant, along with many items on the list, such as "crochet hook"; it was her cunning way of expanding our vocabulary. My memories are why I love threads like this.

I remember that when we wrote stories, we only once had a lesson about how to plan and structure them; I also remember some quite difficult exercises with words, such as: "Combine these to make one sentence: The youth was arrested by the police. He broke into the shop."