Grade Level: 3rd
Unit Title:
“Convince Me!” –Persuasive Text
Duration: 4 weeks
***The following Reading Progression reflects using Mentor Text to teach the specific genre. Therefore, reading will come first in the progression followed by writing. Lastly, grammar skills are included and should be taught throughout the unit of study.
Reader’s (Media)
1. Understandings:
 Communication changes from one genre of media to another/
Essential Questions:
 How can media influence thinking?
Knows:
 The conventions of digital media vary (e.g. language in an informational email vs. language in a web based news article.)
 Design techniques used in media include shape, color, and sound.
 Communication changes when moving from one genre of media to another.
Readers responding as writers
2. Understanding:
 Good readers analyze, make inferences and draw conclusions while reading persuasive text.
 Readers use evidence from the text to support the author’s point of view.
Dos:
 Explain design techniques used in media to influence the message.
 Compare various written conventions used for digital media.
Essential Questions:


How do authors use persuasive texts to change the audience’s views on a specific issue?
How does making inferences help the reader understand the author’s point of view?
Knows:
 A reader uses facts in text to draw conclusions and comprehend he author’s purpose.
 A persuasive text is written in order to influence the attitudes or actions of a specific audience on specific issues.
 Readers often use writing to show understanding of a text.
Dos:
 Make inferences and draw conclusions about persuasive texts and provide evidence to support analysis.
 Identify the details or facts that support the main idea and draw conclusions from the facts presented in text using text evidence.
 Identify what the author is trying to persuade the reader to think so do. What is the author’s purpose in the text?
 Write responses to persuasive texts to demonstrate understanding.

Impact on Readers
3. Understandings:
 Persuasion influences the ideas and perspectives of others.
Essential Questions:
 In what ways does writing influence the thoughts and opinions of others?
Knows:
 Personal interest drives your writing. Writers reveal the importance of a topic through a unique voice.
Dos:
 Reveal conviction about a topic through a unique voice when writing an organized, focused persuasive essay for a specific audience on a specific issue.
Communicate perspective (role of speaker/listener)
4. Understandings:
 Individuals communicate using persuasive techniques to influence the audience.
Essential Questions:
 How do different perspectives influence the world?

Knows:
 Good listeners listen attentively to speakers, ask questions, and make pertinent comments.
 Good speakers speak coherently about the topic of discussion, employ eye contact, adjust speaking rate, volume, enunciation, and conventions of language to communicate ideas effectively.
Dos:


Listen attentively to speakers, ask questions, and make pertinent comments.
Speak coherently about the topic of discussion, employ eye contact, adjust speaking rate, volume, enunciation, and conventions of language.
Author’s and writer’s strategies for persuasive text.
5. Understandings:
 Authors use factual information in an attempt to influence the audience.
 Different types of texts have different structures.
Essential Questions:
 What strategies do authors use to persuade an audience?
 How does a writer’s specific audience and purpose determine the structure of a text?
Knows:
 Writes have a plan in order to research and gather information from multiple sources
(surveys, interviews, on-site inspections, encyclopedias)
 A persuasive text may include supporting facts to convince the audience.
 Paragraphs organize writing and are indented.
 Text features (bold print, captions, keywords, italics, illustrations, titles, topic sentences) help the reader locate information and make predictions.
 Words, images, graphics and sounds work together to impact meaning.
Dos:
 Establish a position on a topic and support using details.
 Generate and follow a plan to gather information about the topic from multiple sources to help persuade the reader
 Generate topics from personal interests or by brainstorming with others.
 Analyze how words, images, graphics, and sound work together in various forms to impact meaning.
 Choose effective word choices to convey the intended meaning.
 Organize ideas into paragraphs (including paragraph indention).
 Use text features to locate information and make predictions.

Writing rubric Hook and Voice
6. Understandings:
 Effective writers capture the audience’s attention from the beginning.
Essential Questions:
 How do effective writers hook and hold their readers?
Knows:

Dos:
 Revise persuasive texts for voice.

Grammar Skills
7. Understandings: Essential Questions:
Knows:
 A comma and a coordinating conjunction
(and, or, but) connect two simple complete sentences into a compound sentence.
 Commas are used when listing items in a series.
 A contraction is a combination of two or more words with an apostrophe replacing a letter or letters.
 A possessive shows ownership and some need apostrophes.
 Context clues help clarify meaning of words.
 Homophones are words that sound the same but have different spellings and meanings
 Synonyms have similar meanings and antonyms have opposite meaning.
 Homographs are words that have the same spelling but have different meanings and pronunciations.
 Coordinating conjunctions )and, or, but) connect two complete simple sentences into a compound sentence.
Dos:
 Use compound sentences (joined by coordinating conjunction) with subject-verb agreement in writing.
 Recognize and use apostrophes in contractions and possessives.
 Recognize and use commas in a series and dates.
 Write legibly in cursive script with spacing between words.
 Identify explicit cause and effect relationships among ideas in text.
 Identify and use antonyms, synonyms, homographs, and homophones.
 Use context clues to understand the meaning of new vocabulary or to distinguish between multiple meaning words or homographs.
 Distinguish fact from opinion in texts such as advertisements, reviews, and news stories.