Opinion Writing

Before spring break, we spent two weeks working on how to formally write an opinion piece. My goal for the students was to have them learn to state an opinion using academic language and to supply reasons that supported their opinion.

On the first day we brainstormed different activities that we could do at recess. Pairs of students each took an acitivity and came up with reasons why that activity was the best thing to do at recess. The students then wrote a paragraph choosing one recess activity and giving reasons why they like it. My goal for the first day was to introduce the concept and emphasize the need to state an opinion and supply reasons. Those terms were nailed in over and over throughout the lesson and writing.

On day two, I introduced students to using sentence frames to state an opinion. Since this was their first day working with the sentence frames, I kept it simple and stuck to these sentence frames. I required that students used these frames, at least for that day. We then did some whole group practice using the frames and a partner practice game. The prompt strips were on one color and the sentence frames were on another colored piece of paper. The student with the prompt paper asked the question and the student with the sentence frame paper responded. After asking and answering, students switched papers and found a new partner. They had such fun with this game!

We ended day two with an easy prompt: their favorite food. We did a quick web and I sent students off to write their opinion paragraph. I emphasized that they had to state their opinion using a sentence frame and give three reasons.

On day three, students sorted opinions and reasons. We first sorted the strips of paper into opinion and reason, then we matched the reason to the correct opinion. This was challenging! After an independent practice with sorting, students chose one opinion and reason pair. They wrote that opinion and reason in their spiral and wrote two more reasons to go with that opinion. This was great practice because they had to use some higher-level writing.

We repeated this series of activities with each component of the opinion paragraph, including using linking verbs and transition words (NOT BEGINNING A SENTENCE WITH AND OR BECAUSE, WHICH DRIVES ME CRAZY!), a topic sentence, and a closing sentence.

By the end of the two weeks, I could really see the students writing develop. As an assessment, they were given a topic and a rubric and they had to write a formal opinion piece, making sure to include all of the elements of an opinion paragraph.