Beginning a persuasive writing unit with your middle schoolers? Approach it through something that persuades us all: advertising! Through studying video and print advertisement, your class will practice Common Core skills for reading...

Young orators demonstrate what they have learned about persuasion and persuasive devices throughout the unit by analyzing a persuasive speech and then crafting their persuasive essays. Class members engage in a role-play exercise, use...

Revisit the documentaries viewed in the previous lesson in this series in order to take a look at the persuasive techniques employed by the documentary creators. Small groups watch the films a second time, taking notes on two provided...

Examine author's purpose in a persuasive text using this scaffolded plan. You essentially have a verbatim script here, but it can definitely be used as an outline instead. Review questions that readers should ask themselves when...

A thorough lesson plan on persuasive writing takes middle schoolers through several activities, including group discussion, collaborative posters, and independent writing. They compare historical speeches and analyze the persuasive...

Readers learn how to choose specific details drawn from a primary source (Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford University commencement address) to support an analysis of informative text.

How can word choice affect a political speech? Middle and high schoolers examine the text of the 1999 State of the Union Address, and then determine how newspaper articles and television reports describe and analyze the event. Use this...

Teens and pre-teens are a prime target for advertisers, so how are they doing it? An interactive instructional activity highlights the strategies used by advertisers, such as visual imagery and verbal clues. Then, a short writing...

The Nashua River serves as the focal point of an investigation of the treatment of and care for natural resources. A reading of A River Rand Wild: An Environmental History by Lynne Cherry, launches the study and class members consider...

Considering a college search project? After picking a possible career choice, and determining if that career needs a technical college or university education, individuals examine a wide variety of sources and select three schools...

Grab a debatable (or controversial) moment from your current reading, and use this task to progress the persuasive writing skills of your high school scholars. Divide your learners into four small groups and let them collaborate, debate,...

21st century learners live in a media world. Help them develop the skills they need to be able to analyze the barrage of propaganda they face daily, with a resource that introduces them to the type of persuasive appeals found in...

Scholars, high schoolers, class members! With the help of this lesson, you too can identify the three persuasive appeals (ethos, pathos, and logos) the characters in William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar used to convince...

Learners study the decisions and solutions involved in winning the right to vote. After reading background information on the fight for women's suffrage, including one woman's story, and its eventual success in the United States and...

Do you know what a fallacy is? Discuss this term and its meaning with your class. Then, talk about why making generalizations about a large group of people isn't the best thing to do. As a group, study the included letter excerpt. It...

Connect with the text using helpful annotation strategies. As your class reads the first section of Karen Russell's short story, "St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves," they note important passages that establish character...

Separating political rhetoric from propaganda is no small feat. Class members are challenged to examine two different sources about a candidate in an upcoming election and determine whether the primary purpose of the source is to inform...

Did you know that clothing and textiles can be recycled, just like glass, paper, aluminum, and plastic? Pupils are introduced to textile recycling and design persuasive posters or letters that raise awareness about this unique...

President Ronald Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" speech, delivered on June 12, 1987 before the Berlin Wall, provides class members with an opportunity to examine three key aspects of informational text: author bias, the use of facts and...

Introduce your class members to allegory and propaganda with a series of activities designed to accompany a study of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Readers examine the text as an allegory, consider the parallels to collective farms...

Should schools continue to teach cursive writing? After reading and considering the merits of a series of arguments on both sides of this proposition, class members choose a side of the issue and craft their own argument, drawing support...

Using an article from The New York Times, students answer discussion questions about gun control. They are divided into four groups to research different standpoints on gun control, including the Executive Office, Congress, Gun...

The Gettysburg Address is a powerful text. Use it to teach persuasion and the importance of word choice. The activity detailed here includes a scaffolded background knowledge activity that includes image analysis of photos from the Civil...

"And the award goes to. . . " High schoolers investigate bias in the movie industry by reading articles, watching a short video, and examining data about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) membership, nominees, and...