What is a persuasive Essay?

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The Power of Persuasion

• What is a persuasive Essay?

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Winter is the best season.

• Disagree

• Agree

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Does anyone know the word for trying to get
someone to change their mind about something?

• PERSUADE

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What is a persuasive essay?

• A persuasive essay states your opinion and tries
  to persuade readers to agree.

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(No Transcript)
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Planning a Persuasive Essay
Introduction The first paragraph of your essay is the introduction. This is were you get the reader interested in your topic and state your opinion. This is also known as your position or thesis statement.
Opinion What you think about your topic. You might not be able to prove that your opinion is right, but you have to be able to explain it and support it.
Argument Thats the support you give for your opinion. You want to persuade your audience to agree with you, so your argument will have reasons and facts.
Conclusion Thats the last paragraph. In your conclusion, restate your opinion and sum up your argument.
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Why write a Persuasive Essay?

• You might want to persuade members of the parent
  teacher organization to sponsor a class trip.
• Your librarian might post a persuasive essay for
  people who visit the library. She may want to
  persuade them to come listen to an author read
  from her book.
• An applicant to a special program sometimes has
  to write a persuasive essay to persuade the
  program to accept him or her.
• Turn to your table partner and think of another
  reason someone might write a persuasive essay.

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Audience

• Good writers always keep their audience in mind
  as they write.

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Let's look at an example!
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Help Keep Our Town Clean! By Bob West The
annual spring cleanup will take place next
Saturday. We will pick up litter in our towns
parks and public places. We also need to pick up
the trash along the highway. Everyone in town
should plan to help out. The man reason for
needing so many people is that the town has a
huge amount of litter. Paper, bags, and bottles
need to be picked up along the roads. The public
boat landing needs to be cleaned up. The litter
around Swan Pond is destroying the beauty of the
woods and water. The small parks department
cannot do all of this work. To do a good job,
many people are needed. Teams of four people
will be assigned to small sections of highways,
parks, and other sites. The cleanup committee is
hoping to have a hundred cleanup teams. If we
all help, the town wont have to raise extra
money for cleanup. Another reason why
everyone should join in is to build community
spirit. Teams of people who work together will
get to know each other. They will feel needed in
their town. Some people will become more aware
of the litter problem. Once they know about it,
they will discourage littering. They may want to
talk about the problem with others. Our town
will become a clean place. People who have
worked hard to clean up wont want to see litter
in their beautiful town again. We should
all gladly help out next Saturday. We have a
huge litter problem, and it is up to us to solve
it. The people who do the work will also benefit
by building community spirit. As Mayor Willis
has said When we take care of our town, we take
care of ourselves.
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A good persuasive essay has the following traits

• Introduction
• Circle the introduction.
• Opinion
• Underline this persons opinion.
• Argument
• Star the paragraphs that show support for the
  stated opinion.
• Conclusion
• Draw a wavy line under the conclusion.

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In the next few days, we will look at more
examples of persuasive essay!

• Turn to your table partner and tell them one
  thing you are excited about when it comes to
  writing persuasive essays.