During my literacy unit, I began our unit on persuasive writing. This is about a month long unit, so I was only able to do about half of the unit during those two weeks. During those two weeks, we went over a lot of the writing process and how to begin to think about persuading and convincing. After teaching the unit, I realize that this is one of the most important parts of the entire unit. We began our unit by defining a few things, such as “persuade” and “thesis statement”. This was important so that we could use those terms during the unit as we constructed our essays. Next, we talked about things we have persuaded people to do. The class did a couple of quick writes and also brainstorming sessions to think about those ideas. The one thing that many students had trouble with is the idea of a thesis statement. We went over this several times in class, but I think they were confusing their statement to grab their reader at the beginning of their essay, with their actual thesis statement. We had to spend an extra day discussing this.
In thinking about the students having difficulty with the thesis statements and such, I would probably need to be even more explicit with my instruction. I have realized that you must give every detail, or there will be a ton of questions. Even when I think I have given too much detail, I still have questions. Another thing I would need to focus on are transitions. I think we needed to spend even more time on small details of the essay, such as this. Many of the students were able to develop their ideas well within a paragraph, but had a lot of trouble with how to start those paragraphs and how to end them.
During the unit, I used a couple student examples to help guide the students. We went through the examples and picked them apart. We talked about where their thesis statements were, how many opinions did they use versus how many facts, and whether or not they were able to persuade us through their use of those opinions and facts. If I needed to help certain students, I would probably use other student examples with those students individually. From our discussions, I could tell that the students were finding the examples useful and were taking a lot of notes along with me. I also have extra writing organizers I can use with a student who needs that extra assistance. This just allows them to think about how they need to lay out their ideas before creating any kind of rough draft. I noticed that this gave the students much more confidence while starting their rough drafts. They went into it knowing where ideas would go, and how they might develop those ideas.
I remember learning to write persuasive essays in school, and it is definitely a skill that needs to be developed. But it is so important in the long term of their education because they will definitely be asked to do this again. Although it is not easy, especially if they have never really worked on this before? I wonder if this was their first expierence with persuasive writing, or if they had worked on it in previous grades. I also thought it was really interesting how you said something you would do differently in the future would be to be more explicit. I couldn't agree more that the more explicit with teaching these kind of skills, the better. For my unit on a comprehension strategy of inferring I found that they had a better time understanding if I was extremely explicit with explaining how to use the strategy. Something else I found really helpful was not only going over student work in class, but also modeling. Show them what it looks like and walk through the thought process of writing a thesis sentence, etc. It might be easier for students to see you writing a thesis statement and then translate that into their own work. I know you are in 5th grade, so your kids are older than my (third grade) kids, but it might be helpful to give it a try.
ReplyDeleteI think it is really interesting that your students are having difficulty writing the beginning and endings of paragraphs because this is something that I am working with my 3rd graders on. My students have a lot of trouble with the same thing. We are working on a smaller scale - i.e. writing solid individual paragraphs and combining them into an essay. I would be curious to see how your class learned to write a cohesive paper. I would also be interested in seeing what your graphic organizer looks like. Our school uses a standard graphic organizer to help students organize their thoughts. I just don't think my students are there yet. They need something a little more concrete.
ReplyDeleteI really liked that it seemed like your students did a lot of thinking and preparation writing before diving into their persuasive pieces. Having them write about a time they persuaded someone to do something is a really good way to help them understand why persuasion is important to learn and reflect on the techniques they may already know about persuading someone. I think I will definitely using this idea for writing in the future when writing theme pieces.