Spark Student Motivation: Double Stuff Your Paragraphs!

Today I'm linking up once again with Joanne at Head Over Heels for Teaching for her Spark Student Motivation Saturdays. Want your reluctant writers to give you a well written paragraph? Offer them a sweet treat for "double stuffing" their paragraphs! Currently, we're getting ready to start drafting our research based argumentative essays. These are a persuasive essay but students must also collect research which helps with their claim and any counterclaims. I've found that fifth graders love to argue but not all of them love writing!

First I spark their motivation with the topics! I absolutely love giving my kids choice... however, since every student needs to read about both the claim and counterclaim - they really need a good text set to rely on. So, for this piece, my teaching partner and I gathered all the research. But we tried to choose topics our students care about!

Here are a few of the choices we came up with...

• Should we have school uniforms?
• Should junk food and soda be sold in schools?
• Should e-readers replace textbooks?
• Should people be allowed to own exotic pets?
• Should cell phones be banned in schools?

Students spent time reading their text sets and researching their topics. Last week, we ended by writing our claims and making a chart of both sides of our arguments. The students did a great job with this activity and really wrote some strong thesis statements. So this week... we get to start double stuffing our paragraphs!

Last year, I found some great resources online for using the OREO model for writing persuasive pieces. OREO stands for Opinion, Reasons, Examples/Explain, and Opinion restarted. We're changed ours to Opinion, Research, Examples, and Opinion restarted. This gets the students to write  really hearty paragraphs full of research and examples to help support their claim or argue against the counter claims.

Here's the graphic organizer we'll be using: 
(You can find many versions for free on TPT. This one is from The Lesson Plan Diva)

 

Then we'll be using Michelle Tomaszewski's Persausive OREO Writing Bundle! She has some excellent graphic organizers as well plus... the real selling point was all her awesome handouts on persuasive writing terms. My teaching partner and I copied those and laminated them on colored card stock to have at each table. Here's a sample:

Once students use some of the persuasive words and are able to provide a DOUBLE STUFFED paragraph filled with research and examples... then they can have an actual Double Stuffed Oreo! Yum! Last year, even my reluctant writers wrote well researched paragraphs all for three Oreo cookies! Oh, the power of a cookie!

  

How do you motivate your reluctant writers?