Writing Introductions: Persuasive Text

Now that we are well into the month of May, students are working on persuasive writing. My fourth graders are writing to third graders who are coming to our school next year. It's a great focus for us as students have an authentic audience and a real reason to write.

Today we worked on writing introductions. Fourth graders can learn some key ideas about introductions, and can use good models to write strong introductions of their own. This page outlines the first part of the lesson:

Writing an Introduction: Persuasive Essay from Emily Kissner

I don't assign this as a standard worksheet--instead, it is the student text for our lesson. Having everything written down in one place is necessary for me, as students are often in and out for various reasons. A shared student text with all of the key vocabulary means that I can easily ask an instructional assistant or another student to highlight the key points from the lesson with anyone who has been absent.

After students learned about the parts of an introduction, they started to write their own. We are writing letters to incoming fourth graders right now to persuade them that they will enjoy our school. (Kids are very excited to write for this audience about this timely topic!) Some students jumped right into the introduction, describing our playground, lunch, or intramurals in detail. Others had more difficulty.

I turned these struggles into our closure for the session. Students love bringing their writing up to the document camera to display to everyone. Today I asked, "Let's hear from those of you who struggled a bit as you worked."

I wasn't sure how many students would want to share their struggles, but about 10 raised their hands. One student said, "I had trouble with the concession bit, because I couldn't imagine what a tiny person would think." (Ah, looking back on the end of third grade with the lofty maturity of a fourth grader!) After students shared, they could call on other students to share comments or questions. A girl said, "I had trouble with the concession part too."

Another student volunteered to share his difficulty with writing a position statement, and another stood up to share her efforts to write an interesting hook. "I finally wrote something down, it's basic, but I think it will work," she said after she read her piece aloud.

It was a lovely writing session and a pleasant debriefing time, the kind of moment that exemplifies end-of-year fourth grade. And it was a little bittersweet for me because I know that our little classroom community is coming to an end...only 20 more days to have conversations like this.

Notes
-The entire persuasive writing unit can be found here.
-This Frolyc activity, ready to send to student iPads, helps students to analyze persuasive text. Tweet

Persuasive Writing: Introductions

For me, the 2012-2013 school year has come to a close. Now it's time to settle back into the routines and do what I've pushed aside during that frantic month of May--read some books, conquer Mt. Laundrymore, and do some writing.

In that month of May, my students and I focused on persuasive writing. What fun! We diagrammed examples of persuasive pieces, looked at how to craft strong persuasion, and wrote persuasive essays.

Because May is such a piecemeal month, full of interruptions, I needed materials that would help us to bridge the crazy times (band practice! field day! field trips!) and give students enough guidance to catch up when we had time. Here is what I created to help students work through writing introductions:

Writing an Introduction: Persuasive Essay from Emily Kissner

How did it go? We finished our essays three days before the end of the year. Whew! It was cutting things a little closer than I like, but we took a leisurely pace in the last two weeks and everything came out okay.

The rest of the persuasive writing materials can be found here. Enjoy these weeks of June!

Persuasive vs. Informational Text

Like many transitional readers, some of my fourth graders have trouble with the difference between persuasive text and informational text. We're making a crucial transition from text with a lot of graphics and features to texts with fewer helpful aids.

And, in a way, I can see their problems. Most informational text does have an element of persuasion--the author is saying, "Listen to me, believe me, I know what I'm talking about." By the same token, most persuasive text also does include some information. It's no wonder that kids are having problems!

And these problems lead to the kids being, well, easily led. Maybe they're not as impressionable as my five year old, who wants to purchase everything on every commercial. (I gave in and bought the Pillow Pet, but I refuse to get the toothpaste dispenser...despite his pleas!) But some students still have trouble recognizing when someone is trying to persuade them.

I decided that students needed to experience much more persuasive text...and learn how to be more skeptical. To direct their thinking, I shared 5 questions for them to ask of persuasive text.

Questions 
1. What is this text trying to persuade me to do?
2. Who is the speaker? Is it different from the author?
3. Why is the speaker/author trying to persuade me? What's in it for them?
4. Does it feel like the speaker is using unfair tricks? (Putting other people down, making me feel bad about something, making me feel like this will make me popular)
5. Do I believe in what the speaker is trying to say?

We had fun taking apart an advertisement, an essay that I pulled from a writing book, and even Don't Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late. They felt very grown-up and sophisticated as they used these questions...and were able to find a lot of unfair tricks.

Hopefully, this immersion in persuasive text will help students to be able to recognize it more easily--and resist it if necessary!