Improving Writing Performance: A Strategy for Writing Persuasive Essays (Archived)

Transcript: Challenge

Ms. Lin, a middle-school English teacher, has been working on persuasive writing with her students. Because she has kept track of student progress during the year, she knows most of her students are able to apply their knowledge of grammar, punctuation, and spelling to their writing. After reviewing topic sentences and supporting sentences with her students for several days, Ms. Lin asks the students to write a persuasive paper. She allows them to write on a topic of their choice because she realizes that students often enjoy picking their own topics. She also expects that students will be more persuasive and feel more ownership if they care about their paper topics. After grading the papers, Ms. Lin becomes concerned with some of her students’ writing skills. She is especially surprised at the quality of the papers written by her students with learning disabilities. While she anticipated that they might have trouble with spelling and grammar, she didn’t expect them to have trouble planning and organizing their papers. She acknowledges that these students, and others in the class, had a difficult time with this assignment and wonders how she can teach persuasive writing more effectively.

Here’s your Challenge:

What should Ms. Lin know in order to provide effective writing instruction?

What could Ms. Lin do to help her students learn to write persuasive essays?