Persuasive Writing - The Hobbit

In this lesson, the students will read The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien and choose two characters they would like to use in a scene they will write. The students will write a scene with one of the characters attempting to persuade the other character to do something.

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 Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. As they read, they need to select two of the characters in the book they want to use when they write a persuasive scene. One of the characters will attempt to persuade the other character to do something or to agree with him about a specific idea. The idea they select needs to come from the book. 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, and punctuation.