Description
Teach students how writers use language to express feelings, evaluate and persuade with this engaging grammar lesson based on Dear Broccoli by Jo Dabrowski and Cate James.
This lesson introduces students to the Language of Attitude, a subsystem of the SFL Appraisal system. Through the playful Rate the Plate activity, students discover how the words they choose to describe and evaluate food can make their opinions stronger, more convincing and more engaging.
Using Dear Broccoli as a mentor text, students explicitly explore the three Attitude subsystems: Affect, Judgement and Appreciation. They identify how these choices position the reader, then apply their learning by writing their own persuasive Letter to the Food I Love.
The lesson moves students through a clear Explore → Model → Share → Practice → Reflect sequence, providing explicit teacher guidance, collaborative analysis and scaffolded independent writing.
Aligned with the Australian Curriculum: English (Version 9) and designed for Years 3–6, this resource includes links across Years 1–6 and provides differentiated opportunities for younger and older learners.
This ready-to-teach lesson includes:
- A fun Rate the Plate opinion activity
- Explicit introduction to Attitude Language
- Teaching of Affect, Judgement and Appreciation
- Guided analysis of language choices in Dear Broccoli
- Opportunities to explore how stronger language affects the reader
- A Language of Attitude Definitions poster
- Scaffolded and open-ended Letter to the Food I Love writing templates
- Reflection and assessment prompts
- Opportunities to connect grammar directly to persuasive writing
Perfect for teaching evaluative language, opinion, persuasion and author’s craft, this lesson helps students understand that the words they choose can shape how readers feel, think and respond.
