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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

What is persuasive writing?

Persuasive text
Persuasive text is written to make the reader do something. Children are taught this form of non-fiction text in Key Stage 2; we explain the key features of persuasive text and how you can support your child's learning at home.

What is persuasive text?

Persuasive texts are constructed to make the reader do something. They are non-fiction texts.

Persuasive texts can take a number of forms, for example an advert persuading you to buy some chocolate, a poster encouraging people to stop smoking or a travel brochure enticing the reader to go to a particular country. Persuasive text is a form of non-fiction text that is usually taught in Key Stage 2.

 
 

Persuasive text often includes:

  • repeated words
  • alliterative words
  • emotional language
  • a strong argument
  • rhetorical questions
  • colourful and eye-catching fonts / capitalised words
  • humour

Persuasive writing in practice

Teachers tend to teach a unit on persuasive texts that is related to a theme children are studying that term. For example, they might be teaching the children about the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece. Children might learn facts about the Games with a view to designing their own poster encouraging people to come.

To familiarise children with the kind of text they want them to eventually produce, the teacher might give the children a range of texts encouraging people to attend various current sporting events. They would look at how the layout of these texts might be persuasive, for example: bright colours, exciting pictures and eye-catching fonts. They would then look at the words and phrases used to persuade people to attend the events. These might include: 'exciting', 'fantastic', 'once in a lifetime', 'limited period only', 'tickets selling fast'. There might be some kind of incentive to buy quickly: 'Book before Friday and get two tickets for the price of one'.

Using their knowledge of the Ancient Greek Olympic Games, they would then plan their own poster, encouraging people to come to the Games. They would need to think about all the features they had studied and decide how they were going to lay out their poster and what they would write on it. They may do some draft writing which they would then edit with the help of their teacher or peers, before producing their neat version.

How are children taught persuasive writing in KS2?

The literacy framework sets out a number of units on persuasive writing in Key Stage 2 that most state school teachers follow.

In Year 3, persuasive writing is linked to information texts, so that a teacher will choose a topic to study and then will show children how to write persuasively about this topic.

In Year 4, the suggested persuasive writing unit is for children to write their own persuasive film review.

In Year 5, children may be taught how to write a letter to a certain person (of choice) to persuade them on an important issue.

In Year 6, persuasive writing is often linked to one of the suggested poetry units.