Letter of Complaint for Primary Children

L.O. Identify the features of a letter of complaint

After searching the internet high and low for a sample letter of complaint that my class would actually find interesting, but also contained clear examples of the features of a letter of complaint, I decided to write my own.

The letter of complaint is to a made-up chocolate company, which the children loved!
We had already looked at some complaint letters from the book, “The Day the Crayons Quit”, by Drew Daywalt (I also highly recommend this - the pupils enjoyed the idea of crayons coming to life!), but I wanted a longer letter that featured:

* Letter writing features (e.g. the structure)
* Connectives/ Openers (for time, place, manner)
* Conjunctions to link sentences
* Emotive language
* Formal and polite language

We picked apart the letter in groups, and discussed the effectiveness of each feature, and imagined if the writer had used the opposite of that feature instead! E.g. Being rude and name-calling instead of being polite.

We also used the Topmarks link below as a starter activity to recap letter writing features in a fun and concise way:
http://www.topmarks.co.uk/Flash.aspx?b=english/letters