Persuasive Writing for Kids - Episode 4: Developing Reasons

Persuasive Writing Episode 4: Writing Your Reasons To persuade means to convince. When we persuade someone, we want to convince them of something we want. I want to convince my teacher that we should have more recess.

Reasons tell your audience why they should listen to you. I've already thought of a few reasons, but i  want to make them even better because if my reasons aren't good enough, my teacher will  never agree to give us more recess time! One great way to develop even better reasons is  to think about the counter-argument.

A counter-argument are reasons that are against what  you want. Think, "Why would my audience say no? " Hmm.

. . what will my teacher say if i ask for more recess?

She might say, "No we don't have enough time for more recess. " or maybe she might say, "You all need to behave better to have more recess! " Now, I can come up with a response to those counter-arguments.

If my teacher thinks we don't have enough time for more recess, I could say, "I know we don't have a lot of time, but even five more minutes would be better! " If she thinks that we need to behave better, I could say, "If we have more recess, we promise to have better behavior! " Next, I can make my reasons better by supporting my reasons with facts.

Facts are statements you can prove. I'm going to look on the internet for some facts about recess. Oh I found this article that says kids learn better when they have more recess.

So I'm going to put as one of my reasons  that kids that have more recess do better in school. This will definitely help convince my teacher. Are you ready to start writing?

Check out episode 5 to see how to start writing your introduction.