Year 3 Persuasive Writing: Devices & Modality

In Year 3, students face the official NAPLAN Writing assessment on lined paper using pencil. While the genre can be narrative or persuasive, persuasive writing is where many students lose marks on vocabulary choice, text structure, and audience engagement. Under ACARA v9.0, Year 3 writers must state a clear opinion, support it with two to three developed reasons, and use persuasive devices such as emotive adjectives and high-modality auxiliary verbs (e.g. must, definitely, crucial) rather than weak words (e.g. maybe, kind of). Teaching young writers how to vary their sentence openings and connect arguments with cohesive conjunctions (furthermore, consequently, on the other hand) dramatically lifts their essay score across multiple rubric criteria.