Reintroduce: Persuasive Paragraph

From FreeReading

What to Do

Prepare

Make a large version of the Persuasive Paragraph Organizer on the board or chart paper.

Model/Instruct

1. Explain the lesson.

Today we will be creating a persuasive paragraph as a group. We will use this worksheet to help plan our paragraph.

2. Review the elements of a persuasive paragraph.

Remember that persuasive writing tries to change the way a reader thinks or acts. What is at the beginning of a persuasive paragraph? The beginning is a topic sentence that states your opinion or feeling. What is in the middle? Right, the middle provides two or more reasons or facts that support your opinion. What is at the end? The end is a closing sentence that restates your opinion and summarizes how you feel.

Practice

3. Give students some topic options to choose from. Try to find a topic that is current and relevant to your students. Help students to determine who (which audience) will be reading the paragraph. (Possible writing ideas: the best pet, the best kind of candy, recycling is important, defending characters from a book, a field trip or party proposal.)

4. Have students help you write a topic sentence and record it on the organizer.

To begin our paragraph we need a topic sentence that states our opinion and gets the reader’s attention. We need to use strong words that show how we really feel about the topic. How should we start out?

5. Encourage students to come up with two reasons or facts to support their opinions.

In the middle we will write some reasons or facts to support our opinions. Who can give me a reason or fact that will help to change the way the reader thinks? Remember to think about our audience. Who are we writing for?

Explain that in a real persuasive paragraph you might want to add more supporting details.

6. Help students to come up with a closing sentence.

The end of the paragraph is the closing sentence that restates our opinion and summarizes how we feel. How can we make our point clear to the reader?

7. Ask students to brainstorm a list of topics that they would like to write about and determine the audience for each topic. Have them record their ideas in a writing journal or notebook.

Adjust

For Advanced Students:

Ask these students to come up with reasons and supporting details for each of the topics that they brainstorm.

For Struggling Students:

These students may have difficulty coming up with topics to write about. Ask them questions to find out what they really care about and help them to write down their ideas.

For ELL Students:

Encourage these students to write a list of things that they like or dislike. You may want to provide a model sentence: I like ____________ because ________________.

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