Ideas for year 2 please

[Serena1977]

I'm a trainee teacher. Next week, I'm teaching a series of English lessons culminating in a fact file about a pretend animal from their own imagination (a flanimal type animal)
Any ideas how I can make it interesting and also what I can do to support children that I know will struggle please?

Is the genre you’re teaching non-fiction fact files? Be careful doing it about an imaginary made up animal. It sounds a bit muddled about whether it’s meant to be fiction or non-fiction and if the children spend all their time using their imagination to make up a flanimal then they aren’t concentrating on the features of the genre. Might be best to stick to real animals for this, and use the made up flanimals idea for a fiction story writing topic?

@FlexibleWorkingDenied and anyone else.

The learning objective is non-chronological report writing. We did real animals this week. I also think it's mixed up but the idea is set for me. I've got to think of the steps I need to take to get to a finished factfile by Friday.

I've also by told to ensure they include a mixture of pronouns, adjectives, fronted adverbials etc

😕😟

It's not mixed up! Loads of non-fiction writing is about fictional topics. It actually works much better for younger children because you're not reliant on them having the knowledge to be able to write factually. You're teaching them the English skills of a non-chron, not the facts about animals.

Have you ever used Talk for Writing? You could start with a model text you've written about a made up animal. Keep to three main sections (e.g. what it looks like, what it eats, what it does for fun). Include all the SPAG you want to cover in your model. Then ideally learn your model, but if not pick it apart and look at the features. Then later they can daw/create their own animals and plan a basic idea for the three sections. Then they write their factfile, possibly over 2 lessons if you're expecting a decent piece of writing.

Hello

You can have them study the features of a text.

It's not mixed up. It means they can focus on the text features and the actual writing, instead of getting distracted by having the correct facts for whatever real animal you would write about.
Take a look at Talk for Writing, as @careerchange456 suggests. I would have boxed up the model text and our shared text by now, before moving them into planning their own.
Have them draw their animal and annotate it, describing the features you want to include in their fact file. Then have them talk about it. Practise and rehearse the sentences or grammar features you want them to include. Once they are secure with that, have them do more extended planning and then move them to their independent writing.
Good luck. It sounds like a fun unit.