Ten lessons — from persuasive techniques to editing with Band 6 control — each with teaching content, an exam‑style question, a model answer, analysis and self‑check criteria.
Intended learning: recognise persuasion in everyday life and name its purpose.
Persuasion surrounds us: the billboard, the cereal box, the letter from a charity, the friend trying to pick the movie. Introduce the core idea with the purpose triangle: informative texts tell us, imaginative texts let us imagine, persuasive texts move us to act or agree. Emphasise the three questions we always ask: who, what do they want, and what technique are they using?
The poster’s contention is that Maya should be chosen as class representative, and its audience is fellow students. The rule of three — “Longer lunch, better canteen, real friends” — lists three benefits in a rhythm that feels generous and effortless. The bare command “Vote for Maya” addresses the reader directly, making the call to action personal and taking it for granted that the reader will vote.
| Feature | Effect |
|---|---|
| Rule of three | Rhythm of three makes the promises feel abundant and complete; easy to remember. |
| Direct command | “Vote Maya” assumes participation and creates momentum. |
| Short sentences | Punchy rhythm suits a poster read at a glance. |
Collect three advertisements (print or TV). For each, note: product, audience, contention (“buy/do/agree…”), techniques. Write one analysis sentence per ad.
Intended learning: write a clear, arguable contention matched to a specific audience.
A contention is the writer’s central claim — exactly what they want the audience to accept. It must be arguable (reasonable people could disagree), specific (not vague), and stable (held throughout). The audience decides tone and evidence: arguing to a parent differs from arguing to a peer. Teach the “who – what – why” planner before any writing.
General contention: “The canteen should replace single-use plastics with reusables because the cost is tiny and the waste is permanent.” To students: “Swap plastic for reusables in the canteen — cheaper for us, nicer for the planet, and a whole lot cooler than trash.” To parents: “A reusable fleet would cut thousands of pieces of plastic a year while keeping prices fair — a small change your grandchildren will feel.” The same idea shifts in register: peers get urgency and slang; parents get legacy and responsibility.
Write three contentions for “homework should be limited” for three audiences: a student, a parent, a teacher.
Intended learning: use and detect ethos, pathos and logos and explain their effects.
Introduce Aristotle’s three appeals as the “muscles” of persuasion. Ethos is credibility — why the reader should trust the speaker. Pathos is emotion — why the reader should care. Logos is reason and evidence — why the reader is logically convinced. A top response threads all three within a single paragraph rather than using them one after another.
The opening claims unique authority — “as a nurse” — lending ethos through professional experience before a single claim is made. “I ache for them” turns that professional into a grieving parent, pathos, lowering the reader’s emotional guard. The closing “the maths is simple” reintroduces logos — a clean, resolvable equation — so the reader is left feeling the problem is both heartbreaking and solvable. Blended this way, each appeal borrows force from the other; reason alone would be cold, emotion alone untrustworthy.
| Appeal | Signal in text | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Ethos | “as a nurse” | Establishes authority and lived experience. |
| Pathos | “I ache for them” | Humanises; creates emotional urgency. |
| Logos | “the maths is simple” | Offers a clear, believable solution. |
Draft three lines of your own — one building ethos, one pathos, one logos — on a topic of your choice.
Intended learning: use a toolkit of devices and always explain their effect on the audience.
Build the class toolkit wall: rhetorical question, rule of three, emotive language, repetition/anaphora, hyperbole, imperatives, expert testimony, evidence. Teach each with its effect, not just its name. Model the sentence pattern “Technique + quote + because + effect on audience” so students never stop at labelling.
The statistic “a thousand trees a day” shocks through logos, the precise scale making waste feel staggering. “In seconds” is the emotive counterweight — pathos — contrasting the slow growth of a tree with the instant of its discarding. The tricolon of imperatives “Ban it. Reuse it. Or lose it” begins with commands and ends in a consequence, so the reader is left facing a simple, urgent choice rather than a debate. Each device builds on the last: reason, then feeling, then a call to act.
Write a 3-sentence advertisement for a school event using at least three devices; then annotate each device.
Intended learning: build paragraphs with TEEL and include a genuine rebuttal.
Introduce the TEEL paragraph: Topic sentence (the point), Evidence (proof), Explanation (how the evidence supports the point), Link (to the contention or next point). Then teach the rebuttal paragraph — the move that earns Band 6: state the strongest objection fairly, then answer it with a fresh reason or reframe it.
Topic: Later starts would match classes to teenage bodies, whose sleep rhythms naturally run late. Evidence: Studies of students starting at 8:30 am or later report better attention and fewer lateness incidents. Explanation: When school respects biology instead of fighting it, the same students absorb more in fewer hours — a smarter use of the day, not a shorter one. Link: This is why shifting the bell is less about comfort than about learning. Rebuttal: Critics warn later starts push afternoons late and complicate family schedules — a fair concern — yet many families already manage wrap-around care for earlier finishes, and an afternoon with daylight beats a darkened morning bus ride for safety and mood alike.
Complete a TEEL plan and a rebuttal for your own contention.
Intended learning: read a print advertisement using the AIDA model and analyse visual + verbal persuasion.
Advertisements are the most common persuasive texts students will meet. Use AIDA — Attention, Interest, Desire, Action — to sequence deconstruction. Teach students to read the layout: slogan, image, body copy, logo. Then move from the surface to the appeals: how does the image create desire? Who is left out? What is implied but never said?
The image pairs luminosity with rest — golden light and a sleeping child — promising not a holiday but an image of family peace the guest already believes they lack. The headline flatters: “You’ve earned this” turns the purchase into a reward, an ethos built on the reader’s worth rather than the destination’s merits. “Book now” creates urgency and completes the AIDA loop. The ad sells an identity — the deserving, devoted parent — which is precisely why it flatters exactly those who already see themselves that way and leaves the single traveler or low-income family comfortably invisible.
Choose a real magazine or digital ad. Annotate it for AIDA and appeals, then write a 4-line analysis.
Intended learning: recognise and compose an editorial/opinion piece with an institutional or personal voice.
An editorial is the newspaper’s official opinion; an opinion piece is a named writer’s viewpoint. Both begin from a live issue, take a clear stance, support it with evidence and end in a recommendation. The key difference: editorials use a measured institutional “we”; opinion pieces use a searching, personal “I”. Show students real examples from quality media to hear the register.
When a school closes its library to save a budget line, it does not save money — it saves the wrong things and spends the right ones. A library is the one public room where curiosity has nowhere else to go: a place that lends out more than books, lending out attention, silence, confidence and the sheer ambition of ‘what comes next’. We say we value creativity and then cut the quietest corner of the school that grows it. This newspaper has long maintained that budgets are moral documents; a library line is their truest test (cf op-ed conventions). We urge principals to treat the next library cut as a withdrawal from the future — and to reverse it.
Convert a news headline into a one-paragraph editorial stance with a recommendation.
Intended learning: argue both as speaker and listener — case, rebuttal and persuasive delivery.
Debate is persuasion made social and timed. Teach the debate skeleton: define the motion, build a case (team’s side + reasons + evidence), prepare rebuttals, and deliver with eye contact, pace and punch. A speaker persuades with voice and body as much as words. Include the ethics: debating both sides teaches the courage to argue fairly and to change your mind.
Opposition will tell you warnings are nanny-state fear — and freedom is real; we guard it too. But the product being marketed to children is not a choice; it is a campaign. A happy cartoon cannot be an argument, and a warning is not a ban. We are not ringing a bell we cannot unring; we are putting the label next to the price everyone already reads. If the truth is not scary enough to be on the box, that tells you exactly why the warning matters.
Write a rebuttal card for the strongest objection your team will face.
Intended learning: plan and draft a full persuasive response under exam-style conditions.
Run a timed plan-draft cycle. First five minutes: unpack the prompt, write the contention, plan three TEEL paragraphs and one rebuttal, choose two devices. Then draft. Emphasise that the introduction must name contention + roadmap, and the conclusion must return to the hook and land the call to action.
Once, the bus was a shared room — strangers practising the small courtesy of coexistence. Today it is a hundred private theatres, each actor tuned to a glowing screen. We should restore the courtesy, not by law but by choice: quiet public places are the last fabric that ties strangers together. Consider the cubicle, the hospital corridor: there we hush without being told. The phone that rings at a funeral is not noise; it is a broken agreement. What we lose in a rung phone we regain in public peace — and what we gain is a society that believes the person next to us is worth silence. Let us put the attention back in the room.
Complete your plan, then draft the full response within 25 minutes.
Intended learning: use criteria, peer feedback and targeted editing to lift a draft to Band 6.
Editing is where Band 6 is finished, not started. Teach a three-pass edit: (1) Structure — is the contention stable and the rebuttal real? (2) Language — are devices effect-led rather than decorative? (3) Flow — read aloud for rhythm and remove filler. Use the marking criteria as a checklist, and give peer feedback in full sentences (“because…”), never just “good”.
Revised: “A chip packet thrown from a car does not vanish — it lingers fifty years, choking a seabird long after the driver has forgotten it. Because litter is not a moment but a legacy, the fine must follow the act as surely as the wrapper follows the wind.” I made the cause concrete through image and turned the flat plea into a maxim a reader can remember — structure first, then language.
Mark your full draft against the marking criteria table in the Persuasive Guide and set one goal for next time.
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