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Offer ladders, not limits You need to teach students to be flexible and versatile, which is HIGHLY valued in the market place. So for example... Teach 5 different ways to take notes. Teach essay. Teach introductions. Teach conclusions. Teach them to task analyze. Teach body paragraphs. But don’t ever tell a student how many paragraphs they should write. – by Rick Wormeli, author of Differentiation and Fair Isn't Always Equal |
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Persuasive tips |
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A resource for people passionate about helping students write well, compiled by Karen Haag
Kids love to argue! Just capitalize on their willingness to put up a good fight for something they believe in and I’ve got them writing persuasively.
While writing about what they know, I teach them to structure their writing cohesively, sequentially and logically. They talk to one another to discover holes in their logic and gaps in their evidence. They study strong samples of the genre by reading mentor texts: newspaper articles, letters to the editor, my writing, and class writing.
That’s the key though; let new-to-the-genre writers learn by writing about what they know first. Then, move them to writing about texts and issues we raise in class for which they may have little or no background knowledge. By giving them assignments ahead of time, they know what facts to gather in their daybooks as they read and study. Then, they're ready.
When teaching my persuasive units, you’ll see students debating, participating in Socratic Seminars, working in conference circles, bouncing ideas off of their friends, researching information to fill the gaps, studying introductions and conclusions of mentor texts, analyzing effective body paragraphs, constructing personal understandings of when and where to embed quotations and statistical evidence, self-assessing their papers and setting personal goals.
When struggling with writing logically, I draw inspiration from NCTE's Guidelines for the 21st Century: "Writers often talk in order to rehearse the language and content that will go into what they write, and conversation often provides the impetus or occasion for writing."
Materials available to read, view, or download
On this page, you can download some of my favorite, persuasive-writing lessons.
Students debate to discover what they want to write and find gaps in their evidence.
Students discuss all sides of current events in Socratic Seminars.
- Read about Socratic Seminars at LikeToRead.com.
- For a video about reading an article of the week, consult Stenhouse Publishers.
- For help finding articles of the week, consult Kelly Gallagher’s website.
Students examine newspaper writing to construct a personal understanding of why and when to embed quotations.
Students work with a partner to explore how to improve their writing.
Students write expressively and poetically to discover what to say.
Students choose their own topics after teacher models how.
Students try out many different planning strategies to discover what matches their learning styles. Students self assess writing and set personal goals.
"If they come into science and they don’t know how to change their minds, they’re not going to learn anything."
– Science teacher
(To enlarge video to full screen, click on button on bottom right corner)