Day 177 - National Park Persuasive Writing - Mr. Murphy and Ms. Scheffer - Fox Hill EdTech Team

Ms. Scheffer and I are ending our year with one of my favorite projects. We are working with Mrs. Nolte and Mrs. Hevey’s 4th grade students on their National Park persuasive writing projects. In this project, students are tasked with writing a persuasive essay about why their parents and families should take them to a National Park during summer vacation. What makes this project so exciting and unique is that so many other subjects are integrated into the research that helps them form their persuasive writing. Students incorporate math by researching how far away their park is and analyzing the cost of the trip. They incorporate social studies skills by incorporating maps into their projects. They incorporate critical thinking and reasoning by determining the best way to access their park. Can they drive in the case of Acadia, or do they have to fly in the case of Yellowstone? They incorporate science by learning about their park’s wildlife and geological formations dating back millions and even billions of years. They learn stewardship by learning climate science and discussing ways to protect our National Parks for future generations. They then synthesize all of this information and then use their writing skills to craft their persuasive essay on why their parents and families should bring them to a National Park during summer vacation. We put all this research together to display in the form of a video presentation and use our green screen to transport the students to their park. Hopefully their essays are successful and they are able to convince their families to pack their bags this summer! I know they’ve convinced me to get out to our National Parks for sure! Check out some examples below!

 

Epic Everglades – Celeste

Wildlife Wonders – Kritika

The Wonders of the Wild – Bella

Day 131 - Persuasive Writing on the Seasons - Ms. Farmer - Francis Wyman Grade 1

This post first appeared on Ms. Farmer's Blog

Which Season Is the Most Important?

While we learned that all seasons are important, the students of Room 111 took their writing to another level and chose one season to write about.  Their goal: to persuade their readers that their chosen season was the most important.

Step One: Learning about all of the seasons:
First, we watched educational videos and read books on each individual season:




Step Two: We recorded our facts into our season notebooks:

Step 3: We learned about the features of good persuasive writing:



Step 4: We each chose a season to write about, outlined our writing on our panning sheets and began our rough drafts:

Step 5: We created our persuasive posters.  We started with writing a beginning to hook our readers.  We then supported this topic sentence with reasons, facts and pictures.  Some pictures were drawn and others were photos which went with our words.  Here we are sharing our posters with each other:

Here are our Persuasive Posters!  Enjoy!

Day 121 - Persuasive Writers Have New Animal Visitors! - Mrs. Hoyt - Pine Glen Kindergarten

This post first appeared on Mrs. Hoyt's Blog

Room 103 has been practicing our persuasive writing skills.  We persuaded Cian, the leprechaun to visit our classroom and leave treasures.  We persuaded Ms. P to bring us a new animal visitor.  Both a toad and some frogs arrived today!

Our confidence as persuasive writers is growing.  Some of us are writing persuasive notes to our parents asking for new toys, play dates, outings and even a new iPad!

We were thrilled when we discovered the treasures left for us by Cian.  Our letters persuaded him to leave items in specific spots.

With our growing confidence, we were eager to write more persuasive letters!

Frodo, the toad arrived today!

Ms. P. took a few minutes to introduce us to our new visitor and teach us how to care for him.  Frodo has rough, light brown skin, webbed feet, and likes to jump!

Spaghetti and Meatball are the frogs that are visiting.  They too have webbed feet, but their skin is smooth and darker.  They tend to be faster than Frodo, so we observed them in a container so they could not leap away!  Both the toad and frogs like to eat crickets.  We can not wait until we get to watch them eat!

Day 95 - Published Persuasive Movies! - Mrs. Bourgeois - Pine Glen Grade 1

This post first appeared on Mrs. Bourgeois Blog

Over the past few weeks first graders have been hard at work wearing many different hats-- researchers, note takers, authors, illustrators, and producers. We are very proud of our finished product-- a persuasive movie about the season we think is the best. The process was a long one-- but it was worth it! Here are the steps we took to complete our finished product:

1. We researched the four seasons and took notes in a research notebook.
2. We chose which season we thought was the best and made a list of reasons why.
3. We rated our reasons on a scale of 1-4 to find our strongest, most persuasive reasons.
4. We wrote a catchy lead sentence to grab our audience’s attention.
5. We drafted our reasons using transition words and juicy details!
6. We came up with snazzy titles to make our movies more appealing.
7. We illustrated and researched pictures for each reason.
8. We imported our pictures into the iMovie app and recorded our movie!
   

We are SO excited to finally be able to share our finished product with our families and friends! We hope that we are able to persuade you to believe the season we chose is the best season of all!  

Check out Morgan's below and click on the names of any of the other students to see their movies.

Addison

Arianna

Brian

Brooke

Drew

Kai

Melody

Rahul

Ryan

Sam