Alice R. Smee
The classroom activities and lessons are designed to incorporate vision and seeing with persuasive writing. The unit will include visual stimuli, descriptive writing, and visualization as tools to expand the students' current formulaic writing. If students use the tools and complete the activities and lessons they should be able to write a persuasive piece that does not include and expands beyond "my first reason is;"
The lessons for this unit consist of 10 lessons. Although there are 10 lessons, some lessons will take more than one class period to complete. The lessons in this unit will be completed consecutively, but not necessarily done everyday. The lessons will meet the district and state standards, as well as the CMT persuasive writing standards. By the end of this unit the students will have all of the tools that they need to write a persuasive piece that would get them a passing score on the CMT.
All lessons in this unit start with grammar mini lessons (please see the section on grammar for reasons why). The first lesson will discuss persuasive writing, the main point of the unit, and introduce it to the students. Although students will have a vague idea of what it is, I have found that with this age group, more times than most you have to start fresh as if they have never heard of a subject. The lessons to follow will include visualization and elaboration mixed with visual stimuli to help students expand their ideas, think creatively, and make connections between writing and their own worlds. Students will also be making connections between images and writing during these activities.