Teaching Persuasive Writing with a Mentor Text

I absolutely love teaching persuasive writing, and I love using mentor texts even more. This year, I used the picture book, I Wanna New Room. This read aloud follows the same format of I Wanna Iguana with letters back and forth from the child to the parents.

My main focus for this lesson was on choosing a main point and providing valid resources to support that point. I also wanted to focus on how details are needed to support each reason given. After the read and enjoyed the book once, we created this anchor chart, using the examples from the text.

After discussing the book, we were able to come up with three reasons with each reason having two details to support it. This was a great starting point for the students to come up with 3 reasons with supporting details for their own persuasive texts. I refer to this anchor chart often to remind the students that a good persuasive text has a clear main point, three reasons, and supporting details to support the reasons.