Persuasive Writing with the Spider and the Fly

I love October and all of the fun fall and Halloween related activities you can do.  This week we will be working on persuasive writing using The Spider and the Fly. We are going to do some research projects this month on spiders and bats so I thought this would be a nice introduction.

You can read a review of the The Spider and the Fly with some other helpful links from Joanne at Head over Heels for Teaching HERE.

To walk through the writing process, we also will be using a video series from LearnZillion. This series walks through writing a persuasive letter in response to "Little Red Riding Hood."  However, we are going to write in response to The Spider and the Fly. The link for the video series of lessons is HERE.  You could easily do all of the lessons to really scaffold the writing process or you could just pick and choose some of them.  LearnZillion does a nice job reviewing over concepts from previous lessons at the beginning of each video. This does give you the option to do just pick and choose some videos. I believe most of my students need the scaffolding so we are going to go through the entire series of videos.  It may take us a couple weeks instead of just one to get through it all.

What are some of your favorite mentor texts for October?

Modeling Writing with Persuasive Letters

With only two months left of school, I am trying to narrow down what I want I feel is most important to still cover.  There are always so many things I feel we never get to.  One of my goals is to do as much informational, narrative, and persuasive writing as we can.  I am going to try to rotate through them and do at least one of each each month if we can.  Thus, they will get 2 more of each.  I want to cover a lot of poetry this month as well.

We also are going to start mystery novel units (literature circles) this week.  I want to do a mystery unit this month, and one more novel or nonfiction unit next month. I probably will have us to at least one of each type of writing with the book units as another way to incorporate reading and writing together.

Last week we did persuasive letters.  I let them pick the topic of their letter and who they wrote it to.  Persuasive letters are a great way to review persuasive writing along with the parts of a letter.  We brainstormed ideas for our letter in our writing journal.  Once they picked their topic and three main points, we used Read Write Think's Persuasive Map to plan out our letters.  I told them the letters had to be 5 paragraphs. Here is a picture of my persuasive map:



Here is the persuasive map for one of my students:



We brainstormed one day, created persuasive maps the next day, and then spent the next two days drafting.  I like to encourage my students to edit while they draft.  I want the writing process to be authentic.  Most of us do not plan, write, then edit and then revise.  Most of us plan a little, write a little, and make revisions as we go.  Writing evolves as your thinking through a topic.

I wrote my letter to my cat to ask him to be less annoying.  When we do major writing assignments,  I like to model my own writing and planning process.  Last week there were several linky parties on writing workshop.  I really wanted to join, but ran out of time to blog several days last week.  One of the linky parties was on Mentor Texts.  One of my favorite websites for mentor text writing lessons is Writing Fix.  I will be honest with you though.  I have seen more growth from my students in their writing when I take the time to model my own writing and writing thinking process.

After I modeled writing my persuasive letter to my students to my cat, many of them chose to write to their own pets.  At the beginning of the year, many of my students could not write a cohesive paragraph.  Now many of them wrote a 5 paragraph persuasive letter with introduction, 3 body paragraphs, and conclusion.  I love seeing the growth in students, especially in writing.  It is an area many students struggle with.  When I model my own writing, I do not always finish the piece.  I usually  write with them while they are writing for the first ten minutes or so, and then I circulate and help my students.  I do not have a document camera, but when I did I would model writing from my own writing journal.  Now, I just type and project my computer screen for them to see.

I really would like to do more formal conferencing; however, I have found sometimes by modeling and explaining my own thought process I can convey one message that many of them will get that then I do not have to try to explain individually.  Then after the initial draft, I can conference and help them individually where they need help.

This was as far as I got modeling my own persuasive letter, but I was able to show them three paragraphs where I modeled how I would use empathy as a persuasive strategy as part of the process to convince my cat to make some changes. As we work on revising for a final draft, I will finish the last two paragraphs to show them.

Do you model your writing?  How do you find it helps?

Disguised Turkeys, Newspaper Articles, and Persuasive Writing

I am going to actually finish all of the products I start one of these days.  Oh, well.

Today we presented our disguised turkeys.  Last week we read Letters from the Campaign Trail: LaRue for Mayor by Mark Teague. 

The vocabulary is fabulous, and the text structure really challenges students.  The story is presented half through persuasive letters and half through newspaper articles. This would be a fabulous story to discuss fact versus opinion and look at differences in newspaper articles and persuasive writing.  You also could look at the differences in opinions between Ike LaRue (the dog) and Mayor Bogwort on the mischievious behavior of dogs in Snort City.

We used this book as our segway from the election to Thanksgiving.  Just like Ike LaRue ran for mayor to represent the interests of dogs, we discussed what a turkey might do represent the interests of turkeys. My students had to present the viewpoint of their disguised turkey.  I gave them the option of writing a letter, writing a story, or writing a newspaper article about their disguised turkey and what he/she does to convince others not to eat him. Now, this is an activity I would like to work on expanding.  We will go more into the features of letter writing, persuasive writing, and newspaper articles.  Today I let them jump in and experiment.  We used the Read Write Think interactive tools to help us. Here are the links:

Those writing a story used the Interactive Story Map to plan out their story.  Those writing a newspaper article used the Printing Press tool.  Those that wrote a letter used the Letter Generator.

For my students who wanted to plan their articles on paper, I used graphic organizers that I had created for a product in my TpT store called Create a Novel Newspaper. (It is an activity I created to be a culminating activity on a class novel, but the graphic organizers could be used for any writing activity where you want your students to create a newspaper article or editorial.)

Here is a picture of my disguised turkey named Turbob, who is disguised as a cowboy or "redneck."



Here is a picture of my newspaper article on Turbob. 



I also am going to write a letter tomorrow from Turbob to juxtapose the letter and newspaper article just like Mark Teague did in Ike for Mayor.

If you are looking for some additional persuasive writing lessons and resources, click here for several fabulous lessons from Read Write Think. There are printables, Powerpoints, lessons, and interactive technology tools.

Persuasive Thanksgiving Writing Ideas

Here are a couple Thanksgiving writing ideas:

Writing Fix has a lesson I love called "Turkey Protests." It is based on the mentor text My Lucky Day by Keiko Kasza where a pig convinces a wolf not to eat him.

The idea of the lesson is to write from the point of view of a turkey convincing humans not to eat you.  The lesson includes ideas, student samples, and graphic organizers for you to print out.  While doing this lesson, I like to also look at other persuasive texts or discuss things like examples of persuasion in media or billboards. Think of Chick Fil A and the cows convincing you to eat chicken.  You could draw posters of turkeys saying "Eat Beef" or "Eat ham."

We are going to use the interactive Persuasive Map at Read Write Think to help us.

I also am planning on doing the disguise a turkey assignment.  Even though it is meant for younger grades, my fifth graders have always enjoyed it in the past.  Here is a link to a free one on Teachers Pay Teachers. My students will write a paragraph describing their disguised turkey. You also could write a biography of the disguised turkey or a creative story about the disguised turkey. You could incorporate the disguised turkey into the Persuasive "Don't eat me" assignment.