Diary Writing Topic Guide for Teachers

A diary is a form of recount, where a writer records events, along with their thoughts and feelings about them. They can be personal documents, or they can be shared with others, perhaps even published.

Diaries are important historical documents because they can give us an insight into what life was like in different times and places. Fiction books can also be written in the form of a diary.

Teach your children about diary writing using our handy topic guide!

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Teaching Ideas

Use our diary templates with younger children to create a weekly diary for a prince or princess.
Try some of our ideas for using The Diary of a Killer Cat with your children.
Write a diary entry for a historical figure, or a character in a book. What would they put in their diary?
Ask children to keep their own diary for a few days. What kinds of things will they write in them? Do they want their diary to be private or are they happy to share what they have written?
This Wordwall sorting activity makes a good discussion starter. Which are features of a diary, and which aren’t?
Write a diary entry in the style of a book, perhaps a cartoon like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or a scrapbook like My Secret War Diary.

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Resources

Our Recount Writing pack includes resources for diary writing and other forms of recount.

This BBC page is a great overview of diary writing.
Show your children What A Good One Looks Like with the examples on Literacy WAGOLL.
These extracts from Anne Frank’s diary are a good introduction for children studying World War II.

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Diary Facts

The oldest known diary is the diary of Merer, which was discovered in a cave in the Egyptian desert. In it, Merer, an official, recorded his activities as he travelled through Egypt, about 4,500 years ago.
Samuel Pepys’ diary is an important source of information about the Great Fire of London. Pepys recorded that he buried a Parmesan cheese to keep it safe from the fire!
Charles Darwin kept a journal during his voyage on the HMS Beagle, which was invaluable to him in gathering evidence for his theory of evolution.
Captain Scott’s journals of his expedition to the South Pole were found with his body, and published the year after his death.

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Videos

Features of a diary entry

Using The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark as a stimulus, this video lesson recaps the features of a diary entry, including informal language and idiom.

Running time: 14:58