Instruct your elementary students to construct a persuasive essay asking you, the teacher, to host a party in the classroom on the following week. Use the incentive of the party to inspire students to write a convincing persuasive paper. Encourage students to make arguments using class events and good classroom behavior as support for the reasons they deserve to have the class party. Reward your class with the requested party, including plenty of candy and cookies, if each student completes the writing project on time, as requested. Use this assignment to teach students to write persuasively, without having to worry about developing a topic, taking a stance or thinking about their own evidence.
Your students' relationships with their parents provides a helpful subject for an elementary persuasive writing project. Instruct your students to write an essay persuading their parents to fulfill a request. Suggest persuasive argument topics, such as allowing a student to stay up longer at night, making a case for parents to buy the student a game he wants or requesting a favorite meal for dinner. Alternately, suggest topics requesting parents stop a specific activity, such as stop making a dinner the student doesn’t like or stop watching a television show the student doesn’t enjoy. Use this to teach students how to develop their own topics for their writing.
Persuasive writing allows students to take a stand on issues they care about. Select a topic from the issues your school regularly faces, such as increasing lunch fees, paying to build a computer lab in the elementary or reducing recess time. Encourage students to take a stance on the issue, either for the action or against, and provide arguments for why the action should or should not proceed. Use this assignment to teach students to take a stance on an issue relating to their lives, and provide persuasive arguments to support their stance.
As persuasive writers become more familiar with the process and develop more sophisticated writing techniques, they are expected to learn to incorporate evidence and research in their writing. Select a topic for your students, as well as a specific stance, such as “schools should teach recycling habits early,” “schools should serve fewer sugar options in cafeterias” or “teachers should incorporate more movies in school.” Discuss the project with your school librarian and pull several relevant books and periodicals from the shelves. Bring your class in to look through the materials, finding their own quotations for evidence. The librarian might also give an introductory lesson on Internet research and using web-based sources. Use this to teach students how to research information for a persuasive paper, while ensuring that the research materials are available for your student’s topic.