Persuasive Text Writing Unit | Years 3 & 4 | LKS2

The premise gives pupils a genuine interest in what they’re writing – it’s a real debate with a real audience. Three differentiated model texts run throughout, giving pupils a consistent reference point for structure, language and register.

The first ten lessons build knowledge of the text type and develop the persuasive techniques pupils need; the final five lessons take pupils through the letter one section at a time, with shared writing, editing practice and a dedicated publishing lesson. Differentiated activities and success criteria are included throughout, and answers or example answers are provided where appropriate.

Lessons covered:

• Hook lesson: pupils practise persuading each other in pairs before reading the example text and exploring the pros and cons of a four-day school week
• Identifying key features of a persuasive letter: sorting and highlighting features across the model texts
• Exaggeration: exploring the language of exaggeration and practising applying it to reasons for a four-day school week in pairs or groups
• Power of three: understanding what it is, how it’s used in the example texts and practising writing examples
• First and second person pronouns: learning through a snap game, then finding pronouns in the model texts, creating a word mat and re-writing sentences with incorrect pronouns
• Writing opinions as facts: understanding the persuasive effect and practising writing examples
• Fact finding: pupils create questions and poll classmates or staff to generate their own simple statistics for their letters
• Extending ideas: exploring how different conjunctions or connective adverbs (however, therefore) are used, followed by a matching card game pairing sentence halves with the right conjunction
• Rhetorical questions: understanding how they’re used in persuasive letters, with activities including gap-fill and creating a rhetorical question word mat
• Planning the persuasive letter
• Writing the introduction and first paragraph: exploring language choices with reference to the model texts
• Writing the third paragraph: supported by a shared write
• Writing the conclusion
• Editing: practising with a provided persuasive letter to edit before revising their own work
• Publishing: producing the final piece

A fully sequenced UKS2 persuasive writing unit – fifteen lessons from hook to published letter, built around a topic pupils genuinely want to argue about.

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Lesson activities will be downloaded as PDF files.