Persuasive Writing Activities to Engage Students

25 February, 2025

We encounter persuasive language in our everyday lives, from our friend trying to convince us to try the new Mexican restaurant, to our children coaxing us into extending bedtime. The ability to persuade is an essential skill and engaging persuasive writing activities make learning this skill fun and effective. In this article, we dive into the world of persuasion and explore different types of persuasive writing, persuasive devices, and nine persuasive writing activities for teaching persuasive language.

Types of Persuasive Writing

Persuasive writing comes in many different forms, though they all share the same purpose: to convince the audience to adopt a particular viewpoint. Different types of persuasive writing include petitions, opinion columns, advertisements, brochures and pamphlets, political campaign materials, speeches, letters to the editor, and more. Incorporating a variety of persuasive writing activities helps students become confident in using these forms.

Persuasive Language Devices

Persuasive language devices are words and phrases that have the power to captivate audiences, evoke emotions, and change minds. Persuasive devices include repetition, rhetorical questions, modal verbs and adverbs, and emotive language. Our article, The Power of Persuasive Language Devices, details each persuasive language device and explains how they can be used in persuasive writing activities to engage students.

1) Letter Writing

Letter writing is a classic persuasive writing activity that allows students to practise their argumentation skills. Have students write a persuasive letter to the principal, a teacher, or their parents, arguing for a specific change they would like to see. For example:

• Lunch breaks should be longer.
• Our school needs a pool.
• Our family should go on a trip.

2) Analysing Persuasive Texts

Provide students with an exemplar of a persuasive text and have them deconstruct it. What has the author included in the introduction? What are the main arguments the author presents? Which persuasive devices has the author used? What is the purpose of the conclusion? Persuasive writing activities like text analysis help students understand structure, organisation, and persuasive techniques.

3) Prompt Practise

Persuasive writing prompts are a great way to get students thinking outside of the box, considering topics they mightn’t otherwise. The prompts can even just be used as a brief argument brainstorming activity. You have 5 minutes to brainstorm as many arguments for/against ____________ as you can!

4) Convincing Characters

Have students take on the role of a character from a familiar story. In that role, they are to try and persuade another character to feel or act in a certain way.

5) Show, Tell ‘n’ Persuade

Incorporate persuasive language practice into show and tell time. As well as talking about the item that they have brought in, students try and convince the class that their choice of item was the best.

6) Shark Tank!

An activity based off the TV series. Organise students into pairs and assign each pair a product idea (e.g. a flavoured water bottle, an alarm clock that works on smell, kangaroo shoes). Pairs must try and convince the class, ‘the shark tank’, that their product is worthy of investment!

7) Debating Rules

Assign small groups of students the task of creating a poster/presentation/video designed to convince their classmates to follow one of the classroom rules more carefully.

8) Graphic Organisers

Graphic organisers are very useful when teaching persuasive writing. They can be used to help brainstorm ideas, organise arguments, are create an outline of the structure of a persuasive text.

9) Logos, Pathos & Ethos

In the world of persuasive writing, three powerful tools take centre stage: pathos, logos, and ethos. Pathos appeals to our emotions, tugging at our heartstrings and evoking empathy from readers. Logos relies on logical reasoning and facts to persuade with evidence and sound arguments. Lastly, ethos establishes credibility by appealing to the character and reputation of the writer or speaker. It’s important to show students examples of persuasive texts and employ each of these techniques, as well as to give students opportunities to use each technique. We have a number of pathos, logos and ethos resources to do just that.

The activities above are just a few ways we can provide guide students to develop strong arguments, consider different perspectives, and communicate their ideas effectively. For more resources and ideas, visit our Persuasive Writing page.