Persuasive Writing - The Fellowship of the Ring

In this lesson, the students will read The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R.R. Tolkien and will write a scene featuring Gandalf and Bilbo. Gandalf tries to persuade Bilbo to give him the magical gold ring before he leaves on his journey.

First, you need to explain to them about persuasive writing. Persuasive writing is when someone attempts to convince another person to see things from his perspective. For example, one of the characters may think it's okay to lie, but the main character doesn't, so he attempts to convince the other one to see the consequences of lying as opposed to telling the truth. After the students understand about persuasive writing and what they are to do with their assignment, then they need to read The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien. As they read, they need to take notes on Gandalf and Bilbo and write their own persuasive scene where Gandalf tries to persuade Bilbo to give him the magical gold ring before he goes on his journey. As they write their persuasive scene, they can also enhance their scene by adding some fictional dialogue. This will help to convince the second character to see the view point of the main character.

After the students have written their persuasive scenes, they will present them to the class. Then, they will submit them to you for grading.

You can grade the students on their oral performance and on how well they wrote their papers. You can grade them on sentence structure, paragraph structure, grammar, spelling, and punctuation.