Persuasive writing, taught nine ways.

Each autumn Year 7 write the leaflets handed to Year 6 families at open evening, and this year they make them in Canva for Education on class accounts the teacher manages. Each student picks a club they belong to, from chess to netball, and writes a headline, an opening that speaks directly to a ten-year-old, three reasons with a detail each, a quotation from a friend in the club with first name only, and a closing instruction on how to sign up. They work on a teacher-chosen A5 template so the time goes on the writing rather than the design. The teacher marks the printed leaflets against the persuasive writing checklist from earlier in the unit, and the strongest dozen go on the open evening tables.

Tools: Canva Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 7 are raising money for the school's charity week, and over two lessons groups of three write and record a one-minute radio appeal. Each group drafts a script that uses at least four devices from the unit, then records it in a shared Soundtrap for Education project inside the school's own group, with one student on voice, one on music loops and sound effects, and one directing. After each take the group listens back, cuts or re-records the lines that drag and trims the script to fit sixty seconds, which forces hard choices about which sentences earn their place. The teacher listens to each group's second take and gives one spoken suggestion before the final mix. Recordings stay inside the school's Soundtrap group, and the adverts chosen are played in assembly without the makers' names.

Tools: Soundtrap Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 7 are writing a piece urging pupils to swap single-use plastic bottles for the new refill stations, which a partner school in another town is fitting this term too, and the article will run in both schools' bulletins. This time they test their writing on readers they have never met. Over two lessons, each group of four first writes two rival openings in a shared Google Doc, one built on a statistic and one on a short story. The teacher puts all eight pairs of openings into one anonymous Microsoft Forms survey that form tutors at the partner school run in tutor time across Years 7 to 11, asking only the respondent's year group, which opening in each pair would make them change bottles, and an optional one-line reason. Around two hundred responses are back by the second lesson, and the partner school's Year 7 class has added comments beside each pair of openings in the shared Google Doc, approved by both teachers, saying what would and would not work on pupils in their school. Each group reads the split for its own pair by year group, with the reasons and comments, then rewrites its opening and plans the rest of the article around what persuaded its readers, sometimes keeping the losing opening's best line. Groups finish with a draft annotated with the evidence behind each choice, and the two teachers pick the article for both bulletins from the strongest.

Tools: Google Docs, Microsoft Forms Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 7 know the devices of persuasion, but their letters wander, so this lesson is about structure. The teacher gives each pair a Microsoft Whiteboard, shared through school accounts, holding twelve sticky notes cut from a letter to the local council asking for a skate park on the old tennis courts: an opening that states the case, three arguments with evidence, a counter-argument and its rebuttal, and a closing call to action. Pairs drag the notes into the order that makes the strongest letter, then add a label beside each paragraph naming its job. The teacher circulates and asks pairs to defend any choice that breaks the pattern, such as opening with the counter-argument. Students finish by copying the paragraph plan into their books as the frame for their own letter.

Tools: Microsoft Whiteboard Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 7 have met eight persuasive devices and now need to recognise them in texts not written for the classroom. The teacher builds a Wayground quiz from fifteen short extracts taken from charity leaflets and adverts, each asking which device is doing the work: direct address, emotive language, statistic, expert opinion, rhetorical question, rule of three, imperative or anecdote. Students play in the student-paced mode with answers shown after each question, so each sees straight away whether an answer was right along with the teacher's one-line explanation, and Redemption Questions at the end give them another go at questions they missed. After ten minutes the teacher checks the per-question report, sees that most of the class is confusing anecdote with emotive language, and stops the room for a five-minute contrast using two of the extracts. Students then finish the quiz and write their own example of each of the two confused devices in their books.

Tools: Wayground (formerly Quizizz) Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 7 have been told that a persuasive writer must know their audience, but every audience so far has been imagined. The teacher has planned a joint lesson with a Year 7 teacher at a partner school in Keswick, on school accounts. Each class answers the same ranking question anonymously in its own copy of a Mentimeter presentation, putting ten arguments for and against building wind turbines on the Lake District fells in order of how convincing they are, from "cheaper electricity for the whole country" to "visitors come here for the views" and "new jobs for local people". On a staff-hosted Teams call, with both classes in their own classrooms and the teachers leading, the two sets of rankings go on screen side by side, and volunteers from each class explain the arguments their class put top and bottom. Students close by writing in their books which three arguments they would lead with for each audience and why, which becomes the plan for a letter in the next lesson.

Tools: Mentimeter, Microsoft Teams Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 7 are starting their persuasive writing unit and need a clear model before they write their own. The teacher has written a one-page letter to the headteacher arguing that lunch should be fifteen minutes longer, and shows it on PowerPoint one paragraph per slide while reading it aloud. After each paragraph students fill in a three-column table in their books: the device (rhetorical question, statistic, rule of three, direct address, counter-argument), the exact words, and what it is meant to make the head think or feel. The teacher lingers on the counter-argument paragraph, which opens "Some staff may worry that a longer lunch means a later finish", to show how a writer concedes a point and then answers it. Students end by choosing the sentence most likely to change the head's mind and writing two lines explaining why.

Tools: PowerPoint Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 7 can spot persuasive devices in a finished text, but their own first drafts stay flat, because a finished model hides the decisions behind it. Over the week before the lesson, the teacher wrote a paragraph arguing that the library should stay open at lunch, naming a version in Google Docs each time it changed: the first draft, the version with a statistic added, the one where a rhetorical question replaced a plain statement, and so on to the eighth. In class the teacher steps through the named versions on the board, with each change highlighted in colour, explains why a word was cut or a sentence moved, and returns to earlier versions to set them beside later ones. Students watch and note three revisions in their books, each with a before, an after and the reason given. They finish by marking one sentence in their own last piece of writing that they would now change, ready for the redrafting lesson.

Tools: Google Docs Nine ideas for your own version in Generate

Year 7 are moving from persuasive letters to writing a speech on climate change for a class assembly, and their evidence paragraphs tend to repeat vague claims such as 'the ice is melting'. The teacher opens the Timelapse layer in Google Earth on the board, flies to the Columbia Glacier in southern Alaska and plays the annual satellite images from 1984 onwards. The class watches the glacier's front pull back up its valley year by year, leaving open water and floating ice where the glacier had been. The teacher replays it, pausing at the first year, a middle year and the latest, and students note in their books exactly what changed between each stop. They then write the evidence paragraph of their speech as a first-hand description of what they watched, and the teacher reads two aloud to show how specific detail persuades where a general claim does not.

Tools: Google Earth Nine ideas for your own version in Generate