Are you looking for simple, effective ways to teach persuasive writing to your kindergarten, first, or second-grade students? You’ve come to the right place! As a teacher who has successfully guided young writers, I have three easy, actionable tips that will transform your persuasive writing unit and empower your students to use their voices.
🎁 Your Quick Start: Grab This First!
Before we dive into the tips, Download my top-rated, free resource, “Persuasion Writing Planning Sheet,” right now!
Why You Need It: This planning sheet will make it much easier for your students to get started writing their own persuasive pieces!
Free Persuasive Writing Planning Sheet!
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Quick Clarifications Before We Begin
Now that you have your planning sheets, let’s set the stage for persuasion:
- Opinion First: I always teach students the difference between opinion and fact first. They must know how to state an opinion and provide simple supporting reasons before I introduce the concept of persuasion. My Opinion Writing Unit is perfect for building this essential foundation.
- Use Letters for Audience: For K-2 students, I find that teaching persuasion through writing letters is highly effective. It immediately gives them a real, tangible audience (like a parent, the principal, or a pet store owner), which makes their persuasive reasons more focused and powerful!
P.S. If you prefer to watch or listen, you can find these same tips in my quick YouTube video below! Don’t forget to subscribe for more K-2 teaching tips!
Tip 1: Power Up Your Persuasion with Mentor Texts
🏆 Can I Be Your Dog? by Troy Cummings: This is an absolute must-use! The dog, Arfy, writes letters to different people (his audience) and cleverly uses different reasons to persuade each one. This book is a perfect springboard for my third tip!
🤩 I Wanna Iguana by Karen Kaufman Orloff: A very popular and engaging text! This book is written entirely as a back-and-forth letter exchange between a little boy, Alex, and his mom. Students see firsthand how Alex adapts his reasons in each letter to try and win his mom over. (Spoiler: He gets the iguana, showing students the power of effective persuasion!)
🌍 Olivia’s Birds: Saving the Gulf by Olivia Bouler: This is a wonderful text to use as an extension or for more advanced students. It shows children that persuasive writing isn’t just about getting what they want; it’s about using their words to make the world a better place. An 11-year-old wrote this and successfully raised over $150,000!
After we read Olivia’s Birds, we can use her ideas as an extension to write our own class book. Here are some of the ideas we use to brainstorm our own class persuasive letter:
Tip 2: Analyze Persuasion to Build Writer’s Brains
Reading mentor texts isn’t enough—your students need to actively analyze them. This step is crucial for developing the brainstorming skills they will need when writing their own persuasive letters.
Why This Works: By modeling this process, I take the guesswork out of planning. Students see a clear path from idea to reasons before they even pick up their pencils!
The “Think-Aloud” Strategy: As I read a mentor text (like Can I Be Your Dog?), I use a simple think-aloud sheet to model how to break down the persuasion:
What does the character want? (The Opinion)
Who is the audience? (The person they are writing to)
What are the reasons used to persuade them? (The Supporting Details)
Why This Works: By modeling this process, I take the guesswork out of planning. Students see a clear path from idea to reasons before they even pick up their pencils!
Free Persuasive Writing Planning Sheet!
You can grab this think-aloud sheet FREE here! This will sign you up to receive my newsletter. Unsubscribe any time.Tip 3: Connect Reasons Directly to the Audience
This is the point where we move beyond simple opinion writing and into true persuasion. The most effective persuasive writing is all about the audience.
- Targeting Reasons: We revisit Can I Be Your Dog? to compare the letters. We discuss:
- Why did Arfy use Reason A for the people in the Yellow House?
- Why did he switch to Reason B for the Fire Station?
- The reasons changed because the audience changed!
- Use a Clear Example: I love to use a funny, relatable example like this with my students: “I would never use my ‘baby voice’ to talk to my principal, even though I might use it with my own son. Why? Because you have to speak differently and use reasons that connect with your specific audience to be persuasive!”
This lesson empowers students to stop just thinking about “What do I want?” and start thinking about “What reasons will convince them?”
Ready to Launch Your Persuasive Writing Unit?
These three tips—using mentor texts, analyzing the persuasion, and connecting reasons to the audience—are the backbone of a successful persuasive writing unit for K-2.
You can find all of my detailed, teacher-modeled lessons, graphic organizers, and extension ideas (including the ones mentioned above!) inside the SJT Writing Club.
If you want to see more videos with ideas for teaching writing in a K-2 classroom, just click my writing workshop playlist below:
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Very useful lessons of writing
Thank you
I just finished watching your first writing video and found it very educational. I have recently started to homeschool my fourth-grade son. I am noticing he finds it very difficult to think of information to write when he is writing from a prompt or a book. I am thinking about starting at a lower level of writing perhaps maybe first grade or kindergarten in order to build his writing confidence. I am open to any suggestions, please.