Persuade me!

Typically, while 8th graders are prepping for the FL writes their interactive notebooks are neglected. Well, there not entirely neglected. After Thanksgiving break we started focusing on persuasive essays. Writing a persuasive essay is typically more difficult to grasp unlike an expository one. To introduce persuasive writing we discussed the difference between persuasive and expository, went over the goals in writing a persuasive essay, the order of this type of essay and then they practiced by writing a persuasive paragraph on soda machines in schools. 

 Each student read their paragraph out loud to the class; who then had to decide if they were persuaded by what they were hearing.

Two weeks ago I gave a mock FL writes. When they finished writing they were given a FL writes rubric. They were instructed to create a fold-able on the four main areas on how their essay would be graded. They then had to pull out information from the rubric that related to grading an essays: focus, organization, support and conventions. On the outside of each flap they wrote themselves reminders on what they needed to do on the day of the test.