How to Write a Powerful Persuasive Essay

Miacademy & MiaPrep Learning Channel

This engaging instructional video guides students through the complete process of outlining and writing a persuasive essay. Using a fun narrative framework about choosing a new mascot for the fictional land of "Persuasia," the narrator demonstrates how to move from a general topic to a structured argument. The video contrasts persuasive writing with informative text, highlighting key differences like substituting a "claim" for a "central idea" and "arguments" for general body paragraphs. The content covers essential components of argumentative writing, including crafting strong, confident claims by removing weak language like "I think." It introduces students to the three modes of persuasion—Ethos, Logos, and Pathos—and demonstrates how to organize brainstormed notes into coherent thematic arguments. Additionally, the video defines and provides examples for advanced rhetorical devices, specifically rhetorical questions, anaphora, and tricolon, showing how these tools add power to writing. Ideal for upper elementary and middle school Language Arts classrooms, this video serves as both an introduction to persuasive structure and a deep dive into stylistic devices. It features interactive segments that ask viewers to revise claims, group research notes, and identify rhetorical devices in a text, making it a perfect anchor for a writer's workshop or a unit on opinion writing.