It sounds simple and straightforward, but the easiest way to begin an opinion writing unit is to teach your students to have opinions!
There are several fun ways to teach your students to have opinions.
Incorporate Math
Graphing is a perfect skill to integrate with your writing standards. In this case, you can ask students their favorite (animal, sport, etc…) and graph the class results. Students can collect data and can write simple opinion statements.
Incorporate Reading
When you are teaching the author’s point of view, you can incorporate opinion writing!
It’s as simple as teaching your students to agree or disagree with the author’s opinion!
Learn more about teaching point of view here.
Would You Rather?
This is a fun game you can play and you can get your whole class moving. Begin by having your class line up in a central location. Have two designated places for students to move for choice A and B.
Then, pose questions. Based on their preference, they’ll move to side A or side B.
Would You Rather Questions:
- Would you rather stub your toe or get a paper cut?
- Travel on a sailboat or travel on an airplane?
- Have extra recess or extra technology time?
- Have pizza for lunch or nachos?
- Play a board game with your family or watch a movie with your family?
Stumped on question ideas? Have your students each write one! Then, you can simply read them.
Opinion Statement Sort
After students have spent time learning what it means to have an opinion, you can move on to teaching them to write opinion statements.
Once students have learned to write an opinion statement, they are ready to move on to writing an opinion paragraph.
O-R-E-O Paragraphs
You’ve probably heard of O-R-E-O writing before, but if you haven’t, it’s a fun way to teach students how to write an opinion paragraph.
Students begin by writing their opinion statement (O), then give a reason (R), an example (E), and restate their opinion (O).
This is a very basic structure that you can use for introducing opinion writing. From there, you’ll want to teach your students how to write an opinion essay!
Check out my ⭐Opinion Piece Writing Units⭐ (Grades 2-5)! These come in both print and Google Slides formats!
Looking for more blog posts about teaching writing? Check out these!
