Sunday, November 27, 2016

Francis_U05a2

     As part of their graduation requirements, students in Virginia must pass two cumulative standardized English tests during their 11th-grade year. The writing portion of this test is broken into two parts: the multiple-choice and the essay. Without fail, the writing part always gets fewer passing scores than any other state-run test because it's so difficult and a large portion of it is graded subjectively. The essay is always persuasive in nature, which means that students must know and understand the specific structure of an argument/persuasive essay. This proves difficult sometimes because they've never had to write a persuasive essay before, and proving something from a prompt that an adult who works in an office created is not the easiest of tasks for a teenager.

     Allowing students to search through a medium they use, like a video, commercial, or even movie, to find how people put together arguments can allow students to synthesize that information with how they will formulate an argument. I think using strategies that allow students to find their own understanding through creativity (with guidance from the teacher, of course) allows the learning to be more authentic, and therefore, more memorable. Students who learn in different ways also have the opportunity to learn the same information at the same time as the rest of their peers. The Persuade Me strategy allows students to watch, listen to, analyze, and synthesize information. They can then create their own argument based on the one they just watched, listened to, and analyzed.

     This activity is a great introduction to a more formal persuasive essay with a state-assigned prompt. Using multimedia that students are familiar with and applying it to a new concept can help them to fully grasp that concept and keep applying it to real-world examples.

Click here to view how I would use the strategy Persuade Me in my classroom.

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