This Lesson's Title:

Persuasive and Emotional Monologues

convincing something scary to leave your narrator alone

This lesson was built for WritingFix after being proposed by NNWP Consultant Amy Richards at an SBC-sponsored inservice class.

The intended "mentor text" to be used when teaching this on-line lesson is the picture book My Brother Dan's Delicious by Steven L. Layne. Before writing, students should listen to and discuss the writing style of this book's author, focusing on the persuasive techniques used by the main character and narrator of the story.

Check out My Brother Dan's Delicious at Amazon.com.

Washoe County teachers, click here to search for this book at the county library.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

Steven L. Layne’s story My Brother Dan’s Delicious, contains the hilarious running monologue of Joseph Demorett II, an elementary student who finds himself alone at home and wondering if there is a monster lurking inside the house waiting to eat him.  He enters, spouting outloud the numerous qualities that his older brother Dan has...which would make him a more delicious treat to eat.  Besides modeling humor effectively, Steven L. Layne shows us a style of writing that sounds like an actual person talking and demonstratres persuasive skills, and students will write their own persuasive monologues about an imaginary (or real) time they were afraid of something. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait in this writing assignment is voice; the writer will purposely add emotion as they create a monologue that uses several persuasive techniques. The support trait in this assignment is word choice; part of good persuasion is carefully choosing words that will have an effect on your reader, or in this case, carefully choosing words that will have an effect on the scary thing listening to your monologue.