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Lesson Plan: Writing--Introduction to Persuasive Writing (Monday 3/7)

Understanding Goal:
Students will understand what it means to take a stance on an issue.
Performance Goal:
Students will participate in the Take a Stance activity and will share both their opinions and their
rationale.
Standards:
CC.1.4.3.G Write opinion pieces on familiar topics or texts. CC.1.5.3.A Engage effectively in a
range of collaborative discussions on grade level topics and texts, building on others ideas and
expressing their own clearly.
Materials and Preparation:
3 signs: agree, disagree, neutral
List of prompts for Take a Stance activity (all animal-related)
Slideshow on the different types of persuasive writing
Classroom Arrangement and Management Issues:
1. Classroom arrangement Before the lesson begins, students at certain tables will be instructed to push their desks against
the wall. The agree, disagree, and neutral signs will be affixed to the wall with enough space for
students to spread out. After the introduction to the lesson, students will be asked to stand and
move around the room. At the conclusion of the Take a Stance activity, students will be seated
on the carpet for the concluding discussion and slideshow.
2. Distribution of materials No materials will be distributed during this lesson.
3. Management concerns Before beginning the lesson, teachers will highlight key expectations for behavior (active
listeners, raising hands to share, etc.). If a student is being disruptive during the activity, we will
give them a warning. Students who continue to be disruptive will be sent back to their seats for
the remainder of the activity. If the entire class is being disruptive, we will send all students back
to their seats and complete the remainder of the activity from there.
Plan:
1. Hook Introduce activity.
Set expectations and give instructions: For this activity, I will be reading some
statements out loud. Each time I read a statement, your job is to decide whether you
agree, disagree, or feel neutral. Then, youll move to the side of the room that represents
your opinion (point to agree/disagree/neutral signs). After we all move, youll be able to
share your thinking with the people around you. So as you decide, think about what
reasons you have for your opinion.
Address the fact that students should be honest and move to the side that genuinely
reflects their opinion, and should not move based on where their friends are.
2. Body Begin with a practice statement. We will read the statement aloud a couple times.

Students will be instructed to think about the statement and their opinion.
After giving some time to think, we will tell the students to move to the appropriate side
of the room.
Once all students have moved, we will tell them to turn and talk about their opinion with
the people near them.
After roughly 30 seconds of talk time, we will call on some students to share what they
talked about. We will call on students who agree, disagree, and are neutral.
Throughout, we will highlight when students are clearly stating their opinion and using
evidence to support their opinion; we will encourage them to do this.
We will repeat this process with four or five more statements, depending on time.

3. Closure Debrief the activity: summarize what students were doing during the activity and
introduce persuasive writing as a genre.
Define persuasive (referring back to the activity--the students just practiced being
persuasive by voicing and backing up their opinions). Tell students that the goal of
persuasive writing is to convince the reader (define convince as well).
Introduce students to the various types of persuasive writing with a brief slideshow.
Assessment of goals/objectives:
Since this is the introductory lesson to our writing unit, we are using this lesson largely as a way
to assess the knowledge and skills students already have about persuasion, prior to starting the
unit. We expect that students may struggle with some of the concepts, such as providing strong
reasons to support their opinions. Our goal is simply for students to understand what it means to
take a stance and practice taking a stance. We will assess this by observing them and listening
to their comments during the Take a Stance activity. If students are consistently able to
determine their opinion, articulate it, and provide some sort of reason/rationale for their opinion,
we will consider them having met the objectives for understanding and performance. For
instance, a statement such as I dont think every person should adopt a pet, because even
though I think adopting pets is good, some people are allergic, demonstrates the students
ability to define their position (not everyone should adopt a pet) and justify it with evidence or an
example (some people are allergic).
Anticipating students responses and my possible responses:
A possible response is that students will have trouble deciding on an opinion and will just
choose neutral. If we notice students who are consistently neutral, or we have a huge group of
neutral students in response to a particular statement, we will be sure to call on these students
and make sure they are being thoughtful and have an intentional reason for being neutral. If
they dont, we will encourage them to form an opinion.
Accommodations:
1. For students who seem to find the activities and discussions too challengingWe expect that the main area of difficulty will be students who struggle to understand the
statements during Take a Stance, or struggle to conceptualize the activity in practical terms (i.e.
they are confused about which side of the room would accurately represent their opinion). In
that case, we will talk with the student, give them more language support, and walk them
through the process if necessary. We might say, So do you think cats are better pets, or dogs
are better pets? ...Okay, you think cats are better pets. The statement says Cats are better pets
than dogs, and you think that too. That means you agree. Where in the room do you go if you
agree? After walking them through this process once, we will monitor how the student seems to

be handling the next statement and check in again if needed.


2. For students who finish early or need an additional challengeIf a student states their opinion but does not provide reasons to support it, we will challenge
them to provide reasons for their stance.
Technology:
The SMART Board will be used to show the slideshow.

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