So You Think You Can Argue?

If you're a fifth grader, the answer to this question is simple.  Fifth graders will argue that the sky is blue or that there's snow on the ground.  They will argue that floating in the middle of an ocean you could tell the difference between high tide and low tide, and when you point out the there is no visual point of reference to tell the difference between tides, they will encounter a mysterious shipwreck or sand dune. Right in the middle of the ocean.  I like to tell that it might rain jello next Thursday.  At this point they are confused, and I remind them that in most instances they need to rein in their brains and think about common experiences and not the outliers.  This is a tough one.

However, we are doing just that with our journey into persuasion and persuasive writing.  We started by reading I Wanna Iguana, a book about a boy who writes letters to his mom to convince her to let him have a pet iguana.

I also asked the kids to think about the techniques advertisers use to convince us to buy or use their products.  In fifth grade, we focused on three persuasive techniques:

• Humor-- getting you to laugh
• Facts and Data-- 9 out of 10 dentists prefer...
• Emotions-- playing on your emotions; making you feel good or another strong emotion.

Kids nominated their favorite commercials and identified which techniques the advertisers were using to convince us to buy or use their product or service.  

Here were a couple of the students' favorites:

And then, following tips from www.writingfix.com, we read the book My Lucky Day, a book about a pig who convinces the fox not to eat him, and in the process gets a little spoiled.  We then created comic strips where a turkey would need to convince the fox not to eat!