World Religions Persuasive Writing Unit Plan

Persuasive Essay Unit Plan on Writing a 5-Paragraph Essay on World Religions

This Unit Plan details the process of writing a persuasive essay about world religions. The goal of this unit is to align writing content with social studies world religions content with the end goal of writing a 5-paragraph essay about a religious controversy. This is a three-week unit that heavily emphasizes research skills. Students spend the first week researching, understanding their topics, analyzing the reliability of sources, and learning about paraphrasing/ plagiarism. Students spend the second week drafting their essays. The third week is spent revising the essay. By the end of the unit, students should be comfortable with the idea of making claims, supporting their claims with reasons and evidence, and ultimately drafting an essay. This unit can be used with 7th graders at any level. The two topic choices differ in complexity.

Advertisement

January 2, 2015November 13, 2015 by Mara Truslow Storey Categories: Unit PlansTags: active reading, claim, content area literacy, lesson plans, persuasion, persuasive writing, reasons, rhetorical triangle, scaffolded learning, social studies, thesis, unit plan, world religions Leave a comment

PBL Narrative Non-Fiction Unit Plan

Project Based Learning, or PBL for short, relies on the creation of an end product. I find it particularly effective for students because they feel motivated and accomplished in the pursuit of completing a multi-step project that has embedded choice, integrates 21st century skills, and includes revision and reworking.

This PBL Unit Plan spans four weeks and focuses on non-fiction narrative writing. Ultimately, students write a non-fiction narrative highlighting the experiences of a family member that is published in a class-wide anthology. This is a Common Core aligned unit that is scaffolded and spirals in other skills necessary to effective writing. Students must integrate oral communication skills in producing interview questions and interviewing a family member. They must also understand historical context and conduct research to supplement their findings from their interview. Students will also analyze mentor texts determining what rhetorical moves are most effective in the narrative non-fiction genre. Finally, high priority grammar skills that students struggled with most frequently are spiraled into lessons as Do Nows.

January 2, 2015November 13, 2015 by Mara Truslow Storey Categories: PBLTags: english teacher, interviewing, lesson plan, middle school, narrative nonfiction, PBL, Project Based Learning, research, unit plan, writing nonfiction Leave a comment