Persuasive Writing: The Grade 3 Edition

Grade 3: Anti-bullying

Hey, Little Ant by Phillip and Hannah Hoose

Persuasive Writing

Before Lesson (Pre-Teaching)

·        Students should be familiar with the concepts and people involved in bullying (also need to understand about power imbalance)

·        If you would like to assess this activity, then students should have been exposed to persuasive writing and have completed some activities in which they practiced persuasive writing

·        You may want to use First Steps: “Eat More Fruit” (read aloud/ask: Why was this written? What is this telling you to do?  Has anyone tried to convince/persuade you to do something?  What reasons did they give you?), label the parts of the text (e.g., opinion, reason #1/support, reason #2/support, summary, call for action)

·        Could repeat with “Why you should not smoke” (available upon request) or other examples

·        Prereading: discuss British vocabulary Would you Rather by John Birmingham (Tribes four corners activity put a “choice” in each corner of the room for students to go to) pair/group off students so that students who choose a different answer are together, students would try to convince the others that their choice is the best (may want to have them write this after using graphic organizer—see below)  I used the choices “supper in a castle”, “breakfast in a balloon”, “tea on the river”

More fun for later would you rather ideas:

·        Your house is surrounded by: snow, water, jungle

·        An elephant drank your bath water, an eagle stole your dinner, a pig tried on your clothes, a hippo slept in your bed

·        Covered in jam, soaked with water, pulled through the mud by a dog

·        Spider stew, slug dumplings, mashed worms, drink snail squash

·        Jump in stinging nettles for $10, swallow a dead frog for $40, stay all night in a creepy house for $100

·        Crushed by a snake, swallowed by a fish, eaten by a crocodile, sat on by a rhinoceros

·        Your dad did a dance at your school, your mom has an argument in Tim Horton’s

·        Clash the cymbals, bang the drum, blow the trumpet

·        Have a monkey to tickle, a bear to read to, a cat to box with, a dog to skate with, a pig to ride, a goat to dance with

·        Chased by: a crab, a bull, a lion, wolves

·        Lost in: the fog, in a desert, at sea, in a forest, in a crowd

·        Help: a fairy make magic, gnomes dig for treasure, an imp be naughty, a witch make a stew, Santa Claus deliver presents

·        Live with: a gerbil in a cage, a fish in a bowl, a parrot on a perch, a rabbit in a hutch, chickens in a coop, a dog in a kennel

During Lesson

·        Could use this as an introduction to persuasive writing OR as lesson part way through a persuasive unit

·        Read the book Hey, Little Ant to the class

·        Review “person who is bullied,” “person who is doing the bullying,” and “bystander”

·        Divide the class into 2 groups for a debate, assign a role (ant or boy) to each group

·        Give each group chart paper to record arguments (ideally 1 point/student) to support their position, using information from the text and their own ideas

·        Have the 2 groups sit facing each other in rows

·        The first person from the ant group states an argument (someone from the opposing group can respond)

·        The first person from the boy group states an argument (someone from the opposing group can respond)

·        When everyone has had a chance to participate (or all arguments are exhausted), then students would choose a position to write about, you may wish to have everyone argue the position of the ant to reinforce the message of anti-bullying/environmentalism

·        You may wish to provide a graphic organizer to help students generate ideas/paragraphs

After Lesson (Assessment/Extension)

·        See rubric below for persuasive writing

·        May wish to repeat the same activity with other texts (e.g., Great Kapok Tree)

·        or concepts (e.g., living in medieval times is better than today)

·        Write about other persuasive topics (e.g., walk to school, not smoking, why they should/should not complete homework, wear a school uniform…)

·        May wish to assess a reading response question such as:

Explain a situation similar to this one.

Why are even small creatures important? 

How did the illustrator create interesting or unusual pictures?  Why were they drawn this way?