Persuasive Essay Lesson Plans for Middle School
- An editorial is an article, generally printed in a newspaper or magazine, that gives the writer's opinion about some current event or major issue. Show students some examples of editorials. Print out a copy for each student or use an interactive board and highlight the opinions in one color and the supporting facts in another. Discuss how the writing revolves around opinions. Next, allow students to choose from a worldwide or national issue or something pressing from local or school news. Ask students to write an original editorial about their selected topic. If desired, type and print the final writings into a newspaper format.
- Persuasive letters are often written to a governmental or business decision maker in order to offer a suggestion or explain an idea to that person. After reading some sample letters and reviewing the parts of a business letter, have students script their own persuasive letters to a local government official or business owner. With parental permission, the letters may be mailed out from the school, and any responses should be shared with the class as an extension of the lesson.
- This lesson could be done entirely in a language arts class or in conjunction with social studies for a more cross-curricular activity. Search online to find video or sound recordings of pre-election speeches and other political addresses, like King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Have students analyze the speaker's presentation, listening for his position and supporting facts, and discuss the findings. Hold a mock election where students write their own political speeches covering opinions on a variety of areas, such as education, jobs, etc. Students should then present their platforms to the rest of the class. All students will make an educated decision and vote for the winner based on which student gave the best, most persuasive speech.
- A public service announcement (PSA) is a brief television or radio commercial meant to inform the public about an issue. Show some clips as examples and ask students to create their own PSAs. They may work in groups to choose their message and script the announcement, and then they may either record themselves or use existing video with a voice-over to present the PSA.