Is a hot dog a sandwich? Are school uniforms necessary? Should we keep that strange creature we found in the forest the other night as a pet?
Classes on Frankenstories have been tackling all these sticky issues, and more! If you haven't tried teaching argument writing with Frankenstories, this month we've got a tonne of resources to help you get started.
- NEW! Argument writing units
- April genre challenge: Write an activist speech
- See what other teachers are doing
NEW! Argument writing units
The Frankenstories prompt library has hundreds of preset game prompts, which can get a little overwhelming. Our new argument writing unit packs contain sets of 5 Frankenstories game prompts which build argumentative skills and consolidate concepts within a theme. We've published 2 units so far:
- Unit 1: Reasoning & evidence
- Unit 2: Argument structure
Each game prompt has an accompanying slide deck to help you teach the concepts scaffolded in the game, including a worked example.
April genre challenge: Write an activist speech!
Get passionate and personal with this month's persuasive writing challenge.
An activist speech is all about conviction. We'll be looking for speeches (serious or absurd) that rally an audience, with evidence, rhetoric, and a whole lot of heart.
We've chosen an image that we think could be taken in a few different ways, but don't feel limited—if there's a cause, topic, or meme that gets everyone fired up, use it!
Need some inspo? This activist speech game from a while back has a class defending IKEA for using lost customers in their meatballs 🫣
See what other teachers are doing
Best of Frankenstories 2024: Ads & Persuasion
There are so many great persuasive writing games on Frankenstories. Check out some of our favourites from 2024 in the Best of Frankenstories Ads & Persuasion yearbook. The book has games from junior, middle years, and senior classes all around the world.
Popular prompt: Is a hot dog a sandwich?
We recently published a collection of prompts based on John Warner's The Writer's Practice, and one prompt in particular has been going gangbusters:
We've noticed a few really good games come out of this (like The Hot Dog/Sandwich Conspiracy). It's great to see students having fun with criteria & match reasoning and watching sparks fly as the two sides of the argument battle it out.
NEW: Topics collection in Discover
Our Great Custom Prompts collection is bursting at the seams with prompts created by teachers for all kinds of writing. A big part of that collection were prompts for a range of argument writing and persuasive writing topics: various school issues, what constitutes a great pet, where to go on holiday... all sorts of things.
Finding engaging argument writing topics to use in class can be a challenge, so to make it easier to find these great prompts, we've made a new Topics collection with these tried-and-tested templates. We'll keep adding more as we spot popular topics in the wild, so there'll always be something fresh. (And if you've got any great argument writing topics that you want to share with the Frankenfam, let us know and we'll add it to the collection!)
Happy teaching and writing!
We're ready to be convinced.