Persuasive Letter - And Then There Were None

In this lesson, the students will read And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie and will write a persuasive letter to someone about coming to their island. The only thing they cannot mention in the letter is the reason they are invited.

First, you need to explain to them about persuasive writing. Persuasive writing is when someone attempts to convince another person to do something or to see things from his perspective. For example, one of the characters may think it's okay to lie, but the main character doesn't, so he attempts to convince the other one to see the consequences of lying as opposed to telling the truth. In this writing assignment, students are to convince a stranger to come to the island, but they cannot explain their real reason for the invitation. After the students understand about persuasive writing and what they are to do with their assignment, then they need to read And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. As they read, they need to take notes so they can be prepared to write their own persuasive letter where someone who lives on an island writes a letter to a stranger and asks him or her to come to the island. As they write their persuasive letter, they can also enhance their letter by adding some fictional dialogue that will help to convince the person to accept the invitation. After the students have written their persuasive letters, they will submit them to you for grading.

You can grade the students on their oral performance and on how well they wrote their papers. You can grade them on sentence structure, paragraph structure, grammar, spelling, and punctuation.