Persuasive Writing Freebee

Teaching persuasive writing can seem like a challenge, but one thing all kids know how to do is to beg! They plead and beg their parents, teacher, and siblings to get the things they want.  Megan and I are teaching persuasive writing to her kinders. It is a fun unit. There are some great selections of children's literature to help us with these! In these books, the characters write letters to ask for something from someone else. The character always promises to do something for then if they do! Kinders know all about this...it's called BEGGING!

We followed these three steps to write a persuasive piece:

Ask Yourself:

What is something you really want?

Who can you ask for it?

What will you do it they give it to you or do it for you?

We started with this anchor chart.  We asked our kids what they REALLY wanted for our classroom...they picked a pet. Then, I asked them who could we ask for the pet. After identifying possible people, we thought about what we could do to persuade them to purchase that pet. We used this chart to help us think of things we could do. (This took 3 days of mini lessons.) You can grab these chart pieces as a FREE file.  Check the bottom of this post for the link.

 

As I was filling in our large chart, each of the kids had their own chart to fill in. This makes sure that they all stay busy the whole time!

We made this fun fish craft to save our "promises" to get a class pet. This is also part of the FREE file.  Just scroll to the bottom of this post.

Now that we have worked through a persuasive piece together, I wanted the kids to develop the skill set to generate their own topic and produce their own piece a writing.   We talked more about the things the kids would want to ask someone for.  Here is the list the kids made of possible things they would want to persuade someone to give them or do for them. I "listened in" while they talked to their partner. I wrote the ideas I heard on the chart. When we came back together, I shared the ideas with the group. Now it's their turn, they each made their own lists. (This took 2 days.)

 Now they are ready to produce their own pieces of writing. During application time, the kids wrote letters to  persuade someone for something!

After a few days we talked about the connection between writing a persuasive piece and writing an opinion. In an opinion piece, you are trying to persuade someone to believe what you are telling them.

We used this chart to help you think about the reasons you would write an opinion piece. We spent an entire week on this chart!

Once we understood the why behind writing an opinion piece, we talked about how a writer must support his opinion by giving reasons and examples.

I used this anchor chart to help us work through the process.

The kids used this piece of paper. We each decided which was best, a bee or a ladybug. The kids circled their choices. Then, they wrote reasons why they thing their insect is the best.  There is also a blank version of this form, one without the bee and the ladybug.

I made these cards so that the kids would have possible ideas of things to choose from. When they are selecting their topic, they are always free to choose their own, but this is a great way to scaffold your struggling writers. The remaining items are from the unit, Writing An Opinion.