Persuasive Essay

This week, we’re reviewing persuasive essay strategies and craft. Students, so far, have completed the following assignments:

4/30:  “Passions” and “Peeves”:  Brainstorm a list of things that really annoy you or things that you really are passionate about, then sift through the list to identify ideas about which you really want to convince someone of something.

4/30, Homework:  Choose two items from the “Passions” and “Peeves” list, then write 3/4 to a half a page about EACH idea…use as much detail as possible and explain why you think others should agree with you. Due 5/3.

5/4:  “Persuasion & Evidence” Choose one of the two ideas you wrote about for 5/3 homework…be sure to choose the one that you think will work best as a persuasive topic. THEN, create a notebook entry with the following:

• The topic of your piece
• Your target audience (be as specific as possible…you should not say “people”)
• Your position. Your position statement–the main point of your essay–must contain the word “should.”

Using six to eight sticky notes, jot all the reasons why you think someone should agree with you. Be sure to include ideas that you came up with in your homework writing from the weekend. If you come up with opposing ideas, include them, also, but group them together in on the bottom of the page. We will use these in crafting counter-arguments.

5/4:  Sifting & sorting–organizing our ideas to create a strong argument. Review your sticky-note ideas from 5/3 and group them together if you see ideas overlapping. Then, choose the three strongest ideas for your target audience. In other words, what ideas will do the best job at convincing the people you want to convince? Then…

Complete the prewriting worksheet.

5/5:  Draft three body paragraphs. Be sure to include 5-8 sentences in each paragraph, and at least two pieces of evidence to prove the main idea for the paragraph.

May 6, 2010. Persuasive Essay.