Perhaps one of the most difficult subjects to teach is writing – be it a narrative, persuasive or even a creative genre.

But you know what – if we teach students the structural components of each genre, the job is half done.

For one thing, scoring is attributed to the hook, opinion, reasons and supporting details in a Persuasive Essay (also called an Opinion Essay) or the elements of a plot in a narrative.

Sentence structure, vocabulary, spelling and puncutation in addition to the flair for writing make up the other half of the scoring. So setting up a child for a more or less 50% success rate by initially focusing on the structural elements of a writing genre is quite forthcoming.

It is interesting to note that writing for the reluctant becomes less intimidating if it is integrated with technology and based on a theme – makes sense doesn’t it – considering that most students love learning that involves digital devices and moreover a topic they can relate to.

This Persuasive/Opinion writing freebie in Google Slides featuring sample texts with an Earth Day theme targets just that. All you need is a Google Drive account and you can assign this resource to your students via Google Classroom or any other safe online learning platform. I’ve also projected this lesson in Zoom by simply sharing my screen and walking students through the scaffolded steps outlined in each section of the writing lesson.

The versatility of working with a writing lesson in Google Slides is that it could be a combination of presentation and interactive slides that involve typing, clicking and dragging to order etc.

So for instance, a slide detailing information can be presented by accessing ‘view‘ on the menu bar in Google Slides and selecting the option ‘present‘.

Information to guide students can also be written on each slide itself thereby scaffolding the structural elements of the genre.

Dragging sentence strips and placing them in the right order further reinforces the structural components of a persuasive piece.

In addition, constructive questions on the mentor text help students reflect on the components of the persuasive essay.

Color coding in Google slides is an effective visual aid and here students can color code the mentor text thereby further assimilating information on the structural components of the persuasive/opinion essay. The mentor text in this resource is editable – which makes this possible.

The constructive questions are editable too, giving the teacher flexibility to change spellings or content.

Graphic organizers are a powerful tool to guide writing and this helps students to keep their writing on track and adhering to structure. That, as I mentioned earlier, is job half-done.

And finally, after students have planned their writing using the graphic organizer, they are ready to write their persuasive piece. The checklist on the right in the slide below would be a great reference tool as they write. Best of all, as this is a digital resource – students type. The perfect outlet for students who are reluctant writers.