Persuasive Writing with Alternate Energy

This year I was determined to streamline my workload by integrating different skills as much as possible. I also really believe that most students are more engaged in the content when you take more of a project approach to teaching instead of segmenting everything into unrelated chunks. With that thought in mind, I started brainstorming ways to blend my writing requirements with the various content areas.

     Science is one of my favorite subjects to teach because it allows so much exploration for the kids. However, it is frequently brushed aside as a less important subject (at least until it becomes tested). But, I decided that it would be the perfect vehicle to engage students in some serious writing! Once my students were excited about the topic, it was much less torturous to convince them that writing about their learning would be fun too.

     This quarter we’ve been learning about Force & Motion and States of Matter. My students have done lots of hands-on experiments and interactive notebooking on the topics so I felt that they were ready to apply that learning in a writing piece. 

I challenged them to choose an alternate energy and then write a persuasive writing piece that would convince someone else to use that form of energy. Since my kiddos are in third grade we limited our choices to solar, wind, or water energy, but older students could easily add more energy sources.

HOW TO FOLD YOUR GRAPHIC ORGANIZER

(sure you could print a cutesy one, but this will save your copies)

STEP#1: Fold it in half

STEP#2: Write your alternate energy on the left

STEP#3: Fold it in half (lengthwise)

STEP#4: Fold it in half (lengthwise) AGAIN

TA-DA!!

STEP#5: Open it up and add the heading 

"Reasons why someone should use _______ energy"

(on the right side)

STEP#6: Let your students work with a partner to brainstorm at least three reasons to justify their argument that their alternate energy is the best.

STEP#8: Model how to write a persuasive opening paragraph. Let the students add their opening paragraph to the RIGHT side of their graphic organizer.

STEP#9: Model (if needed) how to turn the information from the graphic organizer 

to a paragraph format with a snazzy title.

I like to use alliteration in my titles!

  I hope you enjoyed this quickie writing activity to coordinate with your science content!

Thanks for stopping by,

PS. Just a little secret... I'm putting all the interactive notebook items that I've been creating for the last two years into downloadable files for you! They will be interactive notebook-minis so you can choose the topics you want without paying a fortune for giant files that you really don't need. Follow me on TPT to get the update when these are available!