Please type your persuasive essay in a Word Document, and then copy and paste it in the comments section of this post.

Please go to these sites to find information for your neighborhood research sheet:

ZipSkinny

Hotpads

SacBee Homes

You can also look at apartments for rent in the area at:

My New Place

Rent Bits

My Apartment Map

Either on your own, or working with a partner, develop a short persuasive “essay” stating your position, providing reasons to support it, giving an opposing view, and then a counter argument. Create at least one each day (more would be great), and post the link in the comments section of this post.

WRITE A PICTURE STORY: Five Card Flickr Story lets you pick five photos from a group of pre-selected images from Flickr and then write a story about them. It saves your selection and story, and provides you with a link to it. No registration is required.

MAKE A TALKING PERSON: The Arby’s restaurant chain will let you take any image off the Internet and then make it talk by either recording a message on a computer microphone or using the text-to-speech feature.

MAKE A MOVIE: Use Dvolver Moviemaker to create short animations with text bubble dialogue. You can see many examples of these films on my Examples of Student Work page.

CREATE A CARTOON/COMIC: Again, there are a number of great sites in this category. They include MakeBeliefsComix and the Toronto Public Library Tell-A-Story Builder.

MAKE A SLIDESHOW: Bookr is about as easy of a slideshow maker as they get. You can search through images with a tag word, drag them into a flip-like book, and add text. My students love it. You can see some of their samples here.

PICK AN IMAGE AND WRITE A SPEECH BUBBLE: There are a number of sites that allow you to easily grab an image off the web and add a speech bubble with your text. The best one is Bubblr.

SUBTITLE A CLIP FROM A BOLLYWOOD OR A B-MOVIE: Bombay TV lets you choose a scene from a B movie from Bollywood and have fun creating subtitles for the clip.

WRITE A STORY WITH PAINTINGS: The Art of Storytelling is a site from the Delaware Art Museum that allows you pick a painting, write a short story about it, record it with your computer microphone, and email the url address for posting on a student website or blog. It’s extraordinarily simple, and extraordinarily accessible to any level of English Language Learner. No registration is required.

Please type your cigarette essay in a Word document, and then paste it in the comments section of this post.

Add new information to the categories from the cigarette data set.

Find the information here.

Please spend twenty minutes on Dance Mat Typing. You will need your headphones.

Then go to Typing Web. You have to register for it.

Please write in the comments section which one you like best and why:

I liked _____________________ best because _______________.

Please go to this site and look through the links to learn more about gangs and why people join them:

The Best Sites To Learn About Street Gangs

Review these sites to help you learn about writing a persuasive essay.  Please write three things you’ve learned in the comments section.

Here’s a Fact and Opinion game.

Try another Fact and Opinion Game.

Here are lots of fact and opinion activities.

PBS’ Arthur has a simple Facts and Opinions game.

It’s A Fact!

Making Connections

Argument is an activity from the BBC. Other activities connected to it are:

Read

Watch

Quiz

The BBC has another activity called Argue, Persuade, and Advise. Revise is a connected exercise.

Earthlings, Unite! is an interactive sample persuasive essay.

The Joystick of Learning is another interactive sample essay.

Hungry Students Can’t Study is one more sample essay, though it’s not interactive.

Here’s an accessible tutorial on writing a persuasive essay .

Students can quickly and easily create a “map” of their persuasive essay here and post its url on a student or teacher website.

Try this persuasive essay outline generator .

Persuasion Map is from Read Write Think, but it can only be printed-out, not saved.