Persuasion!

When working of persuasive writing with the children, we looked at different adverts and persuasive texts. The children identified the features of persuasive writing and collected words, phrases and rhetorical questions for future use.

Firstly we studied The Highwayman (Year 5-6 transition unit on the framework). The children had to make a decision about whether The Highwayman deserved to be shot, or simply imprisoned. They collected evidence from the text to support their views and used persuasive writing to use in a court of law. The week finished with a court case involving the whole year group.

This piece of work was very structured and the children received lots of guided writing sessions to support their use of persuasive language.

The following week was a chance for the children to have much more independence within their learning. This was where the use of the Wii came in! We spent a whole session playing different games on the Wii and talking about advantages to owning one. I encouraged children to play competitively and co-operatively as well as consider the variety of games on the market.

Once the children had collected lots of ideas they had to write the speech for a radio advertisement selling the Wii. Once again a significant amount of work was done away from the Wii on the class targets - I can use different structures to organise my writing. I can also use paragraphs to vary pace. Work was done in guided group sessions on beginning each paragraph with an introductory statement. Other than these skills being taught, the children were pretty much left to their own devices. A lot of the writing produced was of a good standard and the children were involved in their learning. Throughout this week, however, it did become apparent if children were not interested in computer games and those who had less experience of using a Wii understandably found it harder to produce persuasive paragraphs.