Animal welfare is an authentic context for students to develop their writing skills and understandings of procedural writing purposes and processes. Each of the learning experiences (lessons) can lead to the creation of a product that links with at least one of the domains in the Five Domains Model of animal welfare. On completion of the product, students then write the instructions for how it was created.

Students must consider audience, purpose, context, length, and complexity – plus the specific content of the instructions, such as the steps in caring for a kitten. It is hoped that by providing students opportunities to write to create meaningful written texts, they will be more engaged in the writing process as they will see the tasks as relevant and purposeful.

Writing and reading texts about animals’ needs, care, wellbeing and sentience, will help students in developing greater knowledge and understandings of these topics and therefore support them in becoming informed, responsible animal guardians now and in the future