Persuade Me
Subject: Language Arts
Grades: 9-12
Overview
Students always have opinions, but often they don't know how to persuade someone else to accept their point of view. This lesson introduces students to persuasive writing and rhetorical techniques.
Standards
Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
Students recognize and practice using emotional and logical arguments in written, oral, and visual communication.
Skills
- Writing process strategies
- Persuasive writing
- Idea organization and using detail to support ideas
Preparation
- One week prior to the lesson, have students read editorials from newspapers and magazines.
- Encourage them to take notes about their reading, especially where the writing makes them reconsider an issue or change their minds.
Lesson
- In groups, have students brainstorm issues they feel strongly about and record their information using the Inspiration® RapidFire® tool.
- Each group should choose a specific issue, research the facts, and then begin to list ideas that support their point of view.
- Ask students to share their lists and ask others to come up with counterarguments. As students confer, you may wish to move among them and interject arguments they have not considered.
- Help students determine who their audience is and decide what their specific purpose is in writing.
- Open the Persuasive Essay template and have students switch to Outline View to enter their information. Items left blank in the template show students where they need to do further research or thinking.
- The completed template will form the rough draft of the persuasive essay.
Follow-up activities
- Assign topics to pairs of students and have them take opposing sides. They should write an essay and then trade points of view.
- Direct students to debate alternate resolutions to dilemmas in literature. For example, how else might Hamlet or Romeo have addressed their problems?
For younger students
Choose a topic of interest to students and discuss pros and cons with them. Have students work in pairs to write a conversation between two people who represent the different sides of the argument.
