Travel Writing Unit - thirteen Fully-Resourced Lessons (4-Week Scheme of Work)

Looking for an engaging, skills-rich writing unit that genuinely gets students excited? This thirteen-lesson Travel Writing scheme was designed for Year 7, but can be easily adapted for older year groups. It combines creativity, technical accuracy, vocabulary development and rhetorical flair - all culminating in a high-quality final assessment.

This unit does not just teach students to write - it teaches them how to craft compelling, persuasive articles with purpose.

What is the Aim?

• Students learn how to:
• Write a polished travel article
• Develop ambitious vocabulary
• Improve technical accuracy
• Use rhetorical devices effectively
• Understand audience and tone
• Speak confidently and persuasively

To maximize engagement, lessons reference London and Bristol (easily adaptable to any location), and students are encouraged to research a destination of their choice for homework. This investment in personal choice pays off beautifully - students consistently produce thoughtful, detailed final assessments because they genuinely care about the place they are promoting.

Lesson Outline (thirteen Lessons)

1. What Does Travel Writing Do? Exploring purpose, audience and conventions
2. The Ethics of Travel Writing. Considering responsibility, representation and impact.
3. Different Tones in Travel Writing. Analyzing how writers shape voice and mood.
4. Writing Practice. Guided paragraph construction and modeling.
5. Formatting an Article. Structure, subheadings, layout and presentation.
6. Sensory Detail and Specificity. Moving beyond vague description to vivid writing.
7. Language for Persuasion. Crafting compelling, audience-aware arguments.
8. Adding Detail. Expanding ideas with precision and clarity.
9. Rhetoric. Developing rhetorical devices with clear examples and application.
10. Writing Practice. Extended article drafting with scaffolding and stretch tasks.

11 - 13. The Travel Agency Project (Speaking and Listening Focus)

Students work collaboratively as travel agents, creating and pitching a fictional destination or world of their choice.
This three-lesson project builds verbal skills, teamwork and persuasive confidence - and it is always a highlight of the unit. Students love the creativity, and the quality of spoken language is impressive.
Stretch & Support

Every lesson includes:

• Clear modeling
• Sentence stems and prompts
• Structured scaffolding
• Opportunities for stretch and challenge
• Independent application tasks

The scheme is designed to support developing writers whilst still challenging the most confident students.

Included Extras

• Key vocabulary bank
• Vocabulary quiz
• Assessment slide
• Additional travel writing texts for analysis and comparison