I thoroughly enjoy doing persuasive writing in the classroom, I feel that it can bring lots of creativity, and brings some of the quiet students out of their shells.
Here is a recent lesson I did with a class, where they had to make an advertisement, to sell a random item from the classroom. You will find some examples of the videos that the students made at the bottom. Disclaimer: They are amazing!
Follow these steps for the Lesson:
Firstly, we had a class discussion about what Persuasive writing actually means. Then we talked about different types of language features that you would use when writing persuasively. e.g. Emotive language, Rhetorical questions, etc. This became our Success Criteria List.
Then, we watched some advertisements and tried to spot the different persuasive words and sentences that were being used. The videos were great to use as examples of what the kids could make as their advertisements.
The students buddied up, and I gave them random items from around the class. This was anything that I could see, a highlighter, a stapler, even the floor mop.
They came up with 10 selling points for their items, that they thought would be very persuasive.
Once they had their 10 selling points, they make a poster on Pic Collage with a photo of the item in the middle, and the 10 selling points written around the outside.
When their poster was done, they saved the image to their camera roll, and then uploaded the image to their iMovie app.
On iMovie, they recorded their voices saying the selling points, in an enthusiastic and persuasive way.
Have a look at two of the advertisements below:
This was such a fun activity to try with this year 4 class, they managed to make their advertisements in just over an hour. It is incredible to see what they can do with an iPad.
Let me know if you were able to try this lesson with your class.
