Opinion Writing like MO Willems (K.W.1)

My kids have been having so much fun learning about opinion/persuasive writing and reading Mo Willems books.  We start the week by being introduced to the author using this video.  Then I talked a little bit about what persuading means and I read Don't Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus.  They were given a paper with speech bubbles to write things that the pigeon could say to get to drive the bus.  My higher students came up with their own using the style of Mo Willems and others wrote words very similar to Mo's.  Either way was fine with me, since this was a new type of writing I just wanted them to get comfortable.  When writing time was over we made a circle and they got to share their favorite words they wrote in one of the speech bubbles.  We worked on using voice and gestures to act out our quotes.
On the second day I read Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late then we used the same paper to write things that we say to our parents to try and stay up late.  These were hilarious by the way.  I had them share what they said with their writing partner at the end of our writing time.  During snack time and  read aloud I was able to fit a few more Pigeon books in that I found on YouTube.  I paused the videos several times so they could pair share schema they had about Mo Willems writing, text to text and text to self connections, and predictions.

 

On day 3 we were ready to write our own tale of the pigeon and they were excited.  I played this video, pausing along the way for turn and talks about how the first graders that made this book used Mo Willems idea but made it their own.  Then they could choose if they were going to have their animal be a pigeon or something else.  We talked about making sure to start your book with a person in charge that asks you to watch the animal.  I was really impressed with their original titles.  We had Don't Let the Pigeon Be Santa Claus, Don't Let the Squid Drive the Plane, and Don't Let the Pigeon in the House to name a few.

On Day 4 we watched another example, this time done by a high-school class where I again paused the video for turn and talks.  We worked on the same book we started yesterday and decided on somethings that HAD to be part of your book if you were writing like MO Willems.
*has to start out with a person asking you to watch the animal
*then the animal persuades in lots of ways
*one page written in all caps where the animal is really mad
*the person has to appear again at the end thank you for watching him
*animal has to be looking at something new at the very end (what is his next adventure)

On Day 5 we shared our books with the class, reading the book with feeling and gestures.  Then we wrote a letter to Mo and told him if we liked his Pigeon books or not with three examples of why or why not.  Of course they all wrote that they love his books and some kids even included which book was their favorite.  How do you teach persuasive/opinion writing?  

                                                                                                               

                                               

Here is a link to the speech bubble paper.