Mini-Lesson:​ Letter Writing Mini-Lesson (35 minutes)

Section Details Time/Materials

Hook Capture students’ attention by asking them the word “persuade” 3 min
mean to you? Have them think about a time that they had to
persuade someone to agree with their opinion and how they
accomplished that.

Objective SWBAT convince Governor Hogan to give BCPSS more money for 2 min
school buildings by drafting a persuasive letter
Whiteboard
(Review convince, BCPSS, and persuade with students by marking up marker
objective.)

Standard(s) W.4.1 n/a

Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view
with reasons and information.

I Do Peak students’ interest by asking them to take a few minutes to write 5 min
down what they like about our school building and what they do not
like about the building. Instruct them to focus on the actual facilities,
not the instruction or the people.

Have a few students share out.

Ask students if it is fair that we are in school in these conditions.

Ask students that if they had the opportunity to make changes to our
buildings, would they want to do so?

This is a type of “activism” just like the people we are studying have
been doing.

Explain that we will be writing letters to Maryland Governor Larry

Hogan to ask him for more money for the school buildings in
Baltimore City Public School

We Do 15 min
Have students work in pairs to discuss what they wrote about the
school that they do not like and how they can use those ideas to
Graphic
persuade Governor Hogan that we need more money.
Organizer

Students will then pick their 3 reasons and put them into a graphic
organizer and expand upon those ideas using details.
 MODEL: If your reason is that the floor is always dirty you could put it
in the organizer like this

Reason: We need more money for our school building because the
floor is always dirty
Detail 1: Because the floor is always dirty, people can get sick from
the germs.
Detail 2: If we had more money, we could hire another janitor to
make sure the school is clean, because we only have one janitor.

You Do Students will complete their graphic organizer independently. Once 10

the organizer is completed, students can begin drafting their letter.

Closing Bring students back together to go over the objective once more. Call 1
on students to summarize what we have learned, and how we will
use it in the future.