In the classrooms I support, students are more than happy to share their ideas and opinions with the class. However, writing persuasive pieces and having the opportunity to convince a reader of something can be daunting for some students, which leaves teachers to search for motivating ways to engage students in persuasive writing.

I recently introduced a fourth-grade class to Blabberize, a web-based tool that allows users to add audio to a photo and make it appear as though a mouth in the photo is talking. In one persuasive writing piece, my fourth graders used a turkey to try to convince a farmer not to serve him for dinner. To make the writing unique and motivating, the students were going to record themselves reading their finished persuasive writing and, using Blabberize, they would make it appear as though the turkey were talking directly to the farmer.

Once students drafted and edited their writing, they searched for the perfect turkey photo on iClipart for Schools, a royalty-free clipart website. The image is central to the persuasive writing activity, and students knew they needed to find a turkey that had a prominent beak so the viewer would be able to tell it was moving when the turkey talked. When the perfect picture was selected, students uploaded it to Blabberize and shaped the mouth to the turkey’s beak. Next, students recorded their plea to the farmer, either recording it within Blabberize or by using a different audiorecording platform and then uploading the MP3 file to Blabberize. Finally, students watched their product and shared it with the class.

These students had a great time creating their own talking turkeys with Blabberize and, on the basis of their arguments and evidence, the farmer decided to spare the turkey from being dinner’s main course.

Stephanie Laird is an instructional coach in the Southeast Polk School District in Pleasant Hill, Iowa, where she works alongside teachers to affect student learning through the areas of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and community building. She holds an MEd in Curriculum and Instructional Technology from Iowa State University.