Y07W30WR Plastic Pollution in the Oceans

Part 1

How to Write

Informative – Informative report

An informative report presents organised information on a specific topic for a defined audience. It is written for readers who need clear, factual knowledge they can rely on. The tone is precise and impersonal — the writer’s role is to explain accurately, not to offer personal views.

  • Ideas & content: Select the most relevant facts for your topic and audience. Prioritise information that builds understanding, and leave out what does not serve the report’s purpose.
  • Structure & cohesion: Divide your report into clear paragraphs, each with a distinct focus. Open each paragraph with a topic sentence and use connecting words to link ideas across sections.
  • Voice & audience: Write in third person and maintain a consistently factual tone. Avoid personal opinions or casual phrasing — sound like someone who has researched carefully.
  • Language choices: Use precise, subject-specific vocabulary. Write in the present tense for facts and past tense for historical events. Vary sentence length to maintain readability.
  • Conventions: Spell all technical terms accurately. Use commas, colons and full stops correctly to present information clearly.

Common pitfalls: Including facts without connecting them to your purpose — each sentence should build the reader’s understanding, not just add detail. Losing paragraph structure — keep each paragraph focused on one clear idea.

Part 2

Your Task Plan for Today

The brief

Question: Write a three-paragraph informative report for a Year 7 geography class explaining the problem of plastic pollution in the oceans. Your report must be written entirely in your own words. You will need to choose which information is most important.

Stimulus: The following facts about plastic pollution in the world’s oceans have been gathered from environmental reports and scientific articles.

- An estimated eight million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans every year
- Plastic does not biodegrade — it breaks into smaller fragments called microplastics
- Microplastics have been found in the bodies of fish, seabirds, marine mammals and in human blood
- Single-use plastics make up a large proportion of ocean plastic
- The Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers an area roughly three times the size of France
- Seabirds often mistake floating plastic for food and feed it to their chicks
- Plastic takes between 450 and 1,000 years to partially degrade
- Fishing nets lost at sea — known as ghost nets — entangle and kill marine animals
- Less than ten percent of plastic ever produced has been recycled
- Some countries have introduced bans on single-use plastics with measurable reductions in plastic waste

Task Analysis: This task asks you to select and organise information from a list of facts into a clear, focused report for a Year 7 geography class. A strong response will choose the most significant facts, structure them into three clearly focused paragraphs and explain the issue in your own words — not just list what you have read.

Quick Plan

Plan your three paragraphs:

  • Paragraph 1: The scale of the problem — how much plastic, where does it go?
  • Paragraph 2: The harm caused — to marine life, ecosystems, and beyond
  • Paragraph 3: What can be done — or why the problem is so difficult to solve
  • Decide which facts to include and which to leave out.

Define the key concept

Open your report by establishing the scale and nature of the problem clearly. Your reader is a Year 7 student — give them a vivid, accurate picture of the issue before you develop it.

Paragraph focus

Each paragraph should cover one aspect of the problem. Start each with a topic sentence and develop it with the most relevant selected facts. Don’t spread one idea across multiple paragraphs or crowd several ideas into one.

Tone & voice

Write in an objective, third-person tone appropriate for a geography report. Avoid emotive language or personal opinions. Let the facts make the point.