CCochrane

by ccochrane
 * Using Google Groups to Teach Persuasive Writing:**

From the State Core: Objective 2 (Extended Writing): Write to persuade others. (Emphasize persuasive compositions. Students should use the entire writing process to produce at least one extended piece per term, not necessarily limited to the type of writing emphasized at individual grade level.) a. Experiment with varied organizational patterns and forms of writing (e.g.,memos,letters, reports, essays, brochures). b. Support arguments with personal experience, detailed evidence, examples, and reasoning. c. Use persuasive strategies including appeals to logic, emotion, and ethics.

Objective 3 (Revision and Editing): Revise and edit to strengthen ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency and conventions. a. Evaluate and revise for: Adequate support of ideas (e.g., quotations, facts, examples, anecdotes, and excerpts). Control of organizational elements in multiple paragraph texts (e.g., thesis, details, leads, conclusions, and transitions). Correct use of active and passive voice. Appropriate voice for specific audiences. Specific word choice for different audiences and purposes. Rhythm created through sentence construction (i.e., parallel sentence structure). b. Edit for: Spelling. Correct use of commas to set off appositives. Correct subject/verb agreement. Correct sentence construction (i.e., fragments, run-ons). Correct placement of modifiers. Correct capitalization for abbreviations (Ph.D.) or letters that stand alone (U-turn, I-beams). Correct use of possessives. Correct use of semi-colon.

Part 1: What I am planning on doing is breaking the students up in to groups of 4 students. They will then write down their e-mails and names of the group members to turn in to me (so that they can create a google group with those classmates). One student who is "tech-savvy" will come up. I will let them know how to create a private google group (including the teacher as well in that group) and they will then go back to their group and create the group with them, as well as show them how to use Google groups. If this can be done in a computer lab, even better! These are their groups for feedback and will also be their audience.

Part 2: For part two of the assignment, I will pass out an assignment sheet as well as model what the assignment is by showing them past examples, including my own. This lesson plan is an idea that was given to me by Dr. Debbie Dean of the English Teaching department at Brigham Young University. The assignment is to write a persuasive essay based off of something that the student is passionate about and that they are an "expert" in. The topic must also be something that is commonly misunderstood in society, and in particular, among their group. For example, when she walked the class through this, I chose to write on Sister Missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Most people think that girls only go on missions because they "cannot get married." However, having served a mission gave me an "inside perspective" of why girls go on missions. It was fun to write. I think that students will have fun writing it because it is something that they care about.

Part three: Have the students brainstorm what they could write about. That day/night, they are to post their first post on their google group. It will be the topics they are thinking about writing on. This will also be to make sure that everyone can enter the groups when at home.

Part 4: If there are no technological issues to work out, the next assignment for the following class is to have everyone post at least 5 thoughts or ideas that come to mind regarding their opinion or view of that topic, being HONEST, because that will help the writer know where to start, what the common view is, and how to persuade the others in the group to see from their (the writer's) perspective.

Part 5: Hand out the rubric and then students will work on an outline of their paper in class and at home. This can be done on paper at first, but needs to be transferred over to the Google group during the week. This will be taking place while I will instruct students in mini-lessons during class time on certain things that I will be looking for in particular during grading, including: Spelling. Correct use of commas to set off appositives. Correct subject/verb agreement. Correct sentence construction (i.e., fragments, run-ons). Correct placement of modifiers. Correct capitalization for abbreviations (Ph.D.) or letters that stand alone (U-turn, I-beams). Correct use of possessives. Correct use of semi-colon. as well as... Adequate support of ideas (e.g., quotations, facts, examples, anecdotes, and excerpts). Control of organizational elements in multiple paragraph texts (e.g., thesis, details, leads, conclusions, and transitions). Correct use of active and passive voice. Appropriate voice for specific audiences. Specific word choice for different audiences and purposes. Rhythm created through sentence construction (i.e., parallel sentence structure).

Part 6: The students will realize a peer-edit through their google groups. Each will have to edit the different members of the group (so 3 total each if there are 4 in each group) and each will be assigned a different color to edit in. This way, the author can see who edited what. Recommend to students that they save an original draft in their personal files or flash drive so that they have the original, or to upload the original file to their Google Group. Have the group members do a first basic reading, then a second based off of the criteria from part 5. Since the papers are only about 3 pages double-spaced, this should not take a lot of time.

Part 7: Have the students do a final draft based off of what they take out of the peer edits and make any other final touches.

Part 8: Turn in the final draft to the teacher via Google Groups by the due date (which avoids a lot of paper waste!).

Here is an example of the google group: