ELA_RM106

MON/WED/FRI

10:45-12:15

Level 5 Writing Persuasive Writing Workshop Implementing Collaborative Writing

Activities_Section 2_Undocumented Immigrants & Drivers Licenses
Date: 04/19/2015

Lesson Goal:
Students will be able to collaborate with other students to complete persuasive writing tasks.
Initially with scaffolding techniques/tools provided by the teacher, students will start using the
collaborative writing skills covered in this lesson automatically.
Target Students: Upper-intermediate to Advanced (Level 5) international students in a
private English school in San Diego. This class has 13 students; 9 are from China, 1 from
Vietnam, and 3 from Saudi Arabia. *(Change of student demographic updated on 04/15/2015:
The Vietnamese student stopped coming to school due to personal reasons.)
Lesson Duration: 90 minutes
Background Knowledge: The students should have learned advanced grammar structures
and simple & complex sentence structures. The students should have basic knowledge in
writing structure. In this semester, the students have already learned how to write narrative,
cause-and-effect, comparison essays. Persuasive is the last genre that the students learn this
semester. The students should have learned persuasive strategies.

Objectives:
Terminal
1. Students will be able to work collaboratively with other students on ideas development.
2. Students will write collaboratively with other students using appropriate grammar
structures and tones.
3. Students will fully understand the characteristics of the persuasive writing genre and be
able to write a good persuasive essay using persuasive strategies.
Enabling
4. Students will learn persuasive strategies and analyze persuasive essays referring to the
strategies that they learn.
5. Students will brainstorm for ideas collaboratively and produce writing pieces in a small
group.
6. Students will practice using appropriate words/phrases to support different purposes in
effective persuasive communication, including persuasive strategies.
7. Students will use a graphic organizer to help them begin organizing their ideas into
written form.
8. Students will comprehend the skills to include in real-life situations.

Materials:
1. Power Point Presentation: Created according to the agenda of the lesson, providing
background information of the topic. It also includes instruction for all the activities
implemented in this lesson.
2. Mentor Text:

3. Handouts:
Persuasive Strategy Definition
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson56/strategy-definition.pdf
Persuasive Strategy Checklist
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/lesson_images/lesson56/observation.pdf
VOA News on undocumented immigrants being granted drivers licenses.
http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/illegal-immigrants-can-now-get-a-driverslicense/2598128.html
5 Paragraph Essay Outline

http://freeology.com/wp-content/files/5paragraphessay.pdf
Reflective Journal Guide (developed by myself)
Worksheet for the Jigsaw activity (developed by myself)
Pros and Cons
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/upfront/debate/index.asp?article=d041408

Equipment:
Computer that connects to the internet
Doc Cam and Projector

Preparation:
Create a PPT for the lesson
Create Handouts
Pre-group the students for the Jigsaw activity and the collaborative writing activity

Procedures
1. Warm-up activity (5mins)
(1) Small Talk
The teacher starts the lesson by having small talk with the students.
(2) Todays tasks
The teacher should make the procedure of todays lesson visible to the students (either
on PPT or on the white board): 1. Small Talk 2. Background Information on Todays Topic
3. Mentor Text Analysis - Jigsaw activity 4. Collaborative Writing Activity
Undocumented immigrant with drivers licenses 5. Closure. The teacher should briefly tell
the students what will be covered in todays lesson and ask the students if they have any
questions regarding the agenda.
2. Background Information on Todays Topic (10mins)

(1) Definitions of terms (5mins)

The teacher will use a PPT slide to talk about the following terms: (1) immirgrant; (2) alien;
(3) illegal immigrant (4) undocumented immigrant. The teacher should ask the students to be
involved in the lecture as well by asking them to read examples and provide explanations or
ideas.
Resource Link: http://www.adversity.net/Terms_Definitions/TERMS/IllegalUndocumented.htm
(2) Video Watching and Whole-class discussion (5mins)
Video Link: http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/illegal-immigrants-can-now-get-adrivers-license/2598128.html

*Before playing the video, the teacher should notify the students that there will be a brief
discussion on the issue after watching video. The students should be ready to share their
ideas.
**Estimated Time Frame: Should be completed by 11: 00 a.m..
3. Mentor Text Analysis - Jigsaw activity (35mins)
Distribute the Jigsaw Activity handout (consisted of a mentor text; word bank; jigsaw activity
worksheet)
Divide the students into groups of 3-4 students, according to the number of students.
The teacher should put the group arrangements on a PPT slide so that the students can refer to
it when it comes to time to switch to another group. Since the students had done a jigsaw
activity last week, they should be familiar with the procedure. The students will be grouped
with the same students, but this time, they will be responsible of a different task.
Persuasive Strategies Group: Qi Wei, Wei Chao, Amelia, Khalifa,
Essay Structure& Paraphrasing Group: Gary, Stephanie, Mohammed, Harvey
Transitional & Persuasive Word/Phrases Group: Yuko, Lee, Ken, Zuhair
The activity procedure is as follow:
(1) Ask the students to get into the Persuasive Strategies Group, the Essay Structure &

Paraphrasing Group, and the Transitional & Persuasive Word/Phrase Group.

(2) Guide the students to briefly go through the article, and use the word bank to explain
some vocabulary.
(3) Inform the students that they are in different groups, which means they are responsible
for different tasks. Guide the students to read through the prompts for their own group, and
allow them sometimes to talk with each other to see if they are clear with the instruction.
Persuasive Strategies Group is responsible for identifying all the persuasive strategies used in
the article. Essay Structure & Paraphrasing group is in charge of analyzing the article outline
and paraphrasing the topic sentences into more academic ones.
(4) Allow each group to work collaboratively for 15 to 20 minutes until every group has
finished their own task.
(5) Rearrange the seats into a big circle, each group take turns sharing their findings.
When listening to other groups sharing, each student should write the findings down on their
own handout, so that they will have another source to refer to for the next activity. It may take
about 10 minutes for every group to share.
During the activity, the teacher should circulate in the classroom and check on students
participation. The teacher should encourage the students to collaborative as best as they can,
and he/she should also tell the students do not be hesitant to ask questions.
**Estimated Time Frame: Should be completed by 11: 35 a.m..
4. Collaborative Writing Activity Undocumented Immigrants (40mins)
Group 1: Zuhair, Wei Chao, Harvey, Ken
Group 2:Qi Wei, Khalia, Lee, Stephanie
Group 3:Amelia, Yuko, Gary and Mohammed
(The group members are different than those in the last activity. Each group will have at least 1
member from each of the three groups in the jigsaw activity in the hope that they will serve as

the expert(s) in that area.)

After analyzing an article that supports undocumented immigrants to get drivers licenses,
the students are now given a chance to write a persuasive essay that is about the disadvantages
of giving documented immigrants drivers licenses. The students are required to work
collaboratively in a group of 3-4 students, negotiating for meaning and filling knowledge gap
so that all of the students will be able to express their ideas and work towards an agreement
with the focus of their essay.
Firstly, each group is required to discuss for their focus and finish the outline for their
essay with the teacher taking on the facilitator role and stepping in when students having
difficulty discussing.
And then, the group has to work collaboratively to finish to essay. The teacher should
have a PPT slide showing the requirements for the essay: (1) The essay should include an
introductory paragraph with a hook clear thesis statement, three main body paragraphs with
topic sentences and supporting details, and a conclusion. (2) The essay should include at least
2-3 persuasive strategies (3) The essay should be written with academic vocabulary words and
transitional phrases. (4) It does not have to be long, but should be including all the points
mentioned above.
The students will be given 40 minutes to finish the essay as a group. After collecting the
essays for assessment, the teacher should hold a whole-class discussion, having each group
sharing their outlines with other groups. If they share the same ideas, ask the students to
analyze their different ways of expressing the same ideas. If they have different ideas, ask the
students to compare the ideas and come up a conclusion.
4.

Closure of the lesson and linking to next lesson (5mins)

Ask the students to use the last 5 minutes to do free-write on what they have done in this
class. Prompt questions will be provided. Or assign the free-write as homework if running out
of time.
References:
Rationale for using Jigsaw activity

http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/using-jigsawcooperative-learning-30599.html