​Our most recent writing unit has been titled “Boxes and Bullets, Personal and Persuasive Essays”. 4th grade has really taken to the persuasive part of this unit. Perhaps learning how to use language and word choices to convince others to do your bidding resonates with the strong personalities we have in the class.We each wrote our own persuasive essay trying to

convince others to join our cause. Whether it be; not having to wear a school uniform, playing video games in school or getting paid for good grade. Students had to to create an argument, write a thesis statement for that argument. Then back up their argument with reasons and evidence to support them. Students where challenged with using rhetorical questions, punctuation, opinion transitions to state their reasons as well as convincing language to persuade their peers. As well as a little exaggeration and perhaps a slight bending of the truth to give them an edge. Examples of their persuasive essays are below.

After writing our persuasive essays we moved onto advertisements and commercials. We spent some time studying and critiquing advertisements from different sources, such as magazines, radio and TV. Breaking down the tricks they use to make their products stand out, and analyzing the language they used to convince consumers to buy their products. We collected our findings together in an anchor chart for our future use. This should come in handy as we have come up with our next project idea which should put our newfound knowledge of how to persuade to good use!