I have been busy supporting students in classes over the last couple of weeks. If you live in Australia, you will be aware of the upcoming NAPLAN assessments and part of supporting students in Year 3, 5 and 7 is based around writing persuasive texts.
We have spent many lessons discussing purposes for writing and one resource I've found useful is the CARS Programme By Hawker Brownlow Education. It's strictly a resource for teaching reading comprehension strategies but when it's all said and done, literacy is most effective integrated and in real contexts for real purposes, where possible.
The CARS programme categorises author's purpose in one of the following:
P, to persuade
I, to inform
D, to describe
E, to entertain
So, when thinking of a real context for my Year 7 students, I decided they would write a persuasive letter to the School Librarian, Mrs Robertson. Of course, Mrs Robertson was in on the gig and has promised to read each letter. The letter was to persuade her one way or the other to buy e-readers for the school library.
Putting pen to paper isn't always the natural thing to do, so students were provided with a graphic organiser
to plan their writing. Students came up with a goal for writing, a stance; for or against and three general arguments. Each argument branched off into three examples and the planning included a rebuttal.
The results were exceptional, students had their plan which made the writing flow much easier, referring to their graphic organiser and not having to stop half-way through writing to come up with new ideas. The drafts were published on the computer as Word documents and the students were proud of their efforts and the process was a worthwhile and productive end result.
See link for Reading Comprehension activity that preceded Year 7 Writing.
http://www.englishforeveryone.org/PDFs/Level_8_Passage_1.pdf
