1 Name: Lindsay Fishman
Grade: 5th
Objectives: Students will be able to:
1. identify the opinion statement in an opinion piece,
2. revise their own writing to strengthen the opinion, and
3. plan a new opinion piece with a strong opinion statement.
Learning Goal: The goal of this lesson is for students to learn what makes a strong opinion
statement.
CCSS for Writing:
Common Core Writing Standards for 5th Grade
Text Types and Purposes: Opinion Pieces
Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.
1. Introduce a topic or text clearly, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure in
which ideas are logically grouped to support the writer's purpose.
2. Provide logically ordered reasons that are supported by facts and details.
3. Link opinion and reasons using words, phrases, and clauses (e.g., consequently,
specifically).
4. Provide a concluding statement or section related to the opinion presented.
Students in Group:
Materials Needed:
1. Rubric for opinion statements (yours may vary based on the student conversation)
The author’s opinion statement does the
following:
Gives the author’s opinion
Presents the opinion clearly
Comes early in the essay (usually 1st
paragraph)
Excellent!
Pretty Good
(could be
improved)
Not There
2 2. Example Persuasive Essay
Dear Blake Shelton,
Ever since I was a young boy, I have loved singing. I have spent many hours learning songs
and singing in public. For many years I have dreamed of earning the opportunity to sing for millions
of Americans. Since the show began, I have watched The Voice regularly, and I am sure that I could
be a superstar who would impress you and the other judges. I believe that I am an extraordinary
singer and that I should be on The Voice. There are several important reasons why you should have
me on the show including my talent, my experience and my passion for singing.
Everyone who has heard me sing has told me that I am extremely talented. Ms. Arpeggio, the
music teacher at our school, has called me, “the most talented fourth grader she has ever taught.” In
addition, I have won numerous talent shows and contests because of my skill as a singer. I do have
considerable singing talent, but I have also lots of experience singing in front of people.
My singing experience includes school concerts and musicals, and I have also sung in our
church choir, at the state fair, and at a birthday party for my friend Sean. In fact, our local newspaper,
the Newark Post, printed a story about the songs that I sung at the Delaware State Fair. In it they said
that I had “the stage presence of someone twice my age.” For me singing in public is fairly common,
and I love it.
Finally, I have an intense passion for singing. Ever since I was very young, I have dreamed of
being a professional singer. I know that it requires a lot of work and sacrifice, but I think that it is
worth it because it makes me so happy. There is nothing I would like to do more than sing
professionally, and I know that appearing on The Voice would launch my career.
I am sure that you receive many requests from young performance who also want to appear
on The Voice. While they may also deserve to appear on the show, I know that my talent, experience
and passion would make me an excellent contestant. I urge you to come and hear me audition.
Sincerely,
Goldentones Jones
3. Playground –sample opinion essay
Dear Mrs. Xxxx,
We need to make our playground safer! We need nice, soft grass. Not to mention we need to
make our playground pinecone free and we need a softer area on the basketball court.
Let’s start out with how we can make our grounds safer. It should be cut about every two to
three weeks. Let the rain stay and let it feel so gentle against our face when we feel it. Also, try and
make the grass stay as green as possible so no one gets prickled by the grass.
Most importantly, make the playground pinecone free! If you fall on one or some stupid kid
hits you with one, you could get bad cuts. Take my word for it, you’ll all have pure enjoyment if
there are no pinecones.
No doubt about it, we need a softer area for our basketball court. If we had a really bad fall
we could be bleeding for weeks! If you know something softer than the cement we have now, I
would totally recommend it!
Please follow the rules that I just told you. Especially the one about the basketball court. Al I
have to say now is, “Be safe!”
Your friend,
Juniper Jones
3 4. Two opinion essays for student evaluation
Example of essay without a real opinion statement:
Every kid in the U.S. goes to school. One reason why it is important to go to school is
because at school you make friends. Another reason why school is important is because this
is where you learn to read and write. A different reason is that you learn about science and
history. One more reason why kids should go to school is because school can be a lot of fun.
I know that some kids might say, “No school.” But I disagree. I say, “School is fun, it helps
you make new friends, and teaches you what you need to know.
Example of essay with a better opinion statement:
Recess is an important part of every student’s day. Unfortunately there are some schools that
have cancelled recess. Students in these schools do not have a chance to play outside during
the school day. I think that students should have recess and go outside every day at school.
One reason everyone should go outside for recess is because children need to move their
bodies. Exercise is good for you and helps you live longer. Another reason for going outside
is it is hard to sit in one place all day. Many students can sit still all day and need to run
around to get their wiggles out. Another good reason for going outside is that you get to meet
kids from different grades and classes. Students can meet interesting kids from other classes
and at recess they have an opportunity to play with them. A final reason for going outside is
to play sports. These are the reasons why I believe kids should go outside for recess.
5. For and Against Chart:
Directions:
List the reasons for and against the topic. After you list as many as you can, decide which set
of reasons is strongest. Put a check mark beside the list you will use in your paper. Then
number the reasons from strongest to weakest. Remember that you’ll want at least 3 in your
paper.
Reasons For
Reasons Against
6. Sentence frames for opinion statements:
a. I think that ________________ because ____________.
b. In my opinion __________________________.
4 c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
In my view, __________________________.
In my mind, __________________________.
I would suggest that ______________________.
Some people believe that ________, but I think _____________.
I used to think that __________________, but now I think that ____________.
Most people would agree __________________, but I think that
________________.
7. Paper for student to plan collaboratively including the following:
a. Two prompts
i. Some adults think fifth graders are not responsible enough to have cell
phones, while others think that they are necessary for safety and
emergencies. Do you think fifth graders should be allowed to have cell
phones? Write a letter to a newspaper opinion section explaining why or
why not.
ii. Do you think fifth graders should be allowed to choose everything that
they eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner? Write a letter to your family
explaining your opinion.
b. The For and Against Chart
c. List of sentence frames
8. Paper for student to plan individually must include the following:
a. Two prompts
i. Do you think that all kids should be required to play sports? Write a letter
to your PE teacher explaining your opinion.
ii. Do you think that art and music should be taught everyday at school?
Write a letter to your principal explaining your opinion.
b. The For and Against Chart
c. List of sentence frames
5 Overview of Writing Lesson Plan
Day 1:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Introduce opinion essays and provide direct instruction on what an opinion statement is.
With teacher scaffolding, create a rubric to evaluate opinion statements.
Identify and evaluate opinion statements from sample texts.
Students use the rubric to revise their own opinion statements from the opinion essay
written previously.
Day 2:
1. Teacher models planning an opinion essay (focusing on the opinion statement).
a. Teacher models using a for/against chart to select an opinion.
b. Teacher models the use of sentence frames for constructing a good opinion
statement.
2. Students plan an opinion essay collaboratively in pairs focusing on the opinion statement.
3. Student pairs swap their plans and evaluate each other’s opinion statement using the
rubric.
4. Students plan their own opinion essay.
DAY 1
I. Direct Instruction on Opinion Essays
Opening: Do you think this winter lasted too long? After listening to a few student responses,
link what they are saying to opinions.
Direct instruction: When I asked you that question, I wanted to hear your opinion, which is how
you think or feel about the topic. A lot of times, when people have an opinion they try to convince
other people that their opinion is right. Just now XXX tried to convince us that this winter was
too cold for too long (or whatever the topic was).
Sometimes people put their opinions into writing and try to convince their readers of their
opinion. These are called opinion or persuasive essays. You remember that you wrote one a
while ago about if children should be allowed to watch television. For the next two days, we’re
going to work on opinion essays and we’re going to focus on opinion statements. I will teach you
how to write strong, clear opinion statements so that you opinion essays will be great.
I want to show you an opinion essay that another student wrote to Blake Shelton, who was a
judge on The Voice. Read it to students and let them see it either as copies or project it.
Now that you’ve heard this essay, do you think the writer should get a spot on The Voice? Short
discussion. Let’s look at it together, and I want to show you my opinion statement. In opinion
essays, the opinion statement usually comes in the first paragraph. The author uses the opinion
statement to tell the reader an opinion about something. The author wants to convince the reader
that his/her opinion is right. So in this essay, the opinion statement is, “I believe that I am an
6 extraordinary singer and that I should be on The Voice.” In the rest of the essay, I provide
reasons designed to show why I should be on the show.
To review, the important things to remember about an opinion statement are:
1. Opinion statements show the author’s opinion about some issue.
2. Opinion statements are clear so I know exactly what the author means.
3. Opinion statements are presented early in the essay, usually the first paragraph.
Write these on the board or on a chart so that students can see them.
II. Create Rubric to Evaluate Opinion Statements
Now that we have a good idea what an opinion statement is, I’d like to create a rubric that we
can use to evaluate some opinion statements. You have probably used rubrics at school before,
but as a reminder, they are used to evaluate or score something. I brought a copy of a blank
rubric for us to fill out together. What I’d like you to do now is to turn to your neighbor and think
about what we should have in the rubric for opinion statements. You might want to look at our
list of important things to remember about opinion statements for help.
Give students time to talk and make sure they can see the chart.
Now that everyone’s had a chance to talk about what we should put on the rubric, I’d like to
hear your suggestions. Take some time to listen to students’ ideas. If they are reluctant or
confused, present your rubric.
III. Identify and Evaluate Opinion Statements
Now let’s look at some opinion essays together. I want us to find the opinion statement in each
one and use our rubric to see how good it is. Let’s look at the first one together, it’s called
“Playground”. Read the essay to students aloud and make sure they can see it.
Take a second to look it over. I want you to look for the opinion statement. Take some time and if
students have ideas, call on them. In this, I think the author begins the whole essay with the
opinion statement. He says, “We need to make the playground safer!”
Now that we’ve identified the opinion statement, let’s use our rubric to evaluate it. Provide
students with blank rubrics and have one at the front to complete. The first point is “gives the
author’s opinion.” Our job is to decide how well the author gives his opinion. What do you
think? You can let students discuss and then say something like, I think the opinion is right there,
the author definitely provides an opinion, so I would mark “excellent”.
The second point is “presents the opinion clearly”. What do you think? You can let students
discuss and then say something like, the opinion is pretty clear. But as I was reading it, I wasn’t
sure what playground the author meant. Maybe it’s the school playground or it could be one at a
park or some other place. So I would mark “pretty good” on this one because I think it could be
improved.
The third point is that the opinion statement “comes early in the essay”. What do you think? You
can let students discuss and then say something like, the opinion is the first sentence. It might
7 have been useful to have more of an introduction, but it’s definitively early. So I would mark
“excellent” on this one.
Now that we’ve looked at some together, I’d like for you and your partner to read two more
opinion essays and do the following:
1. Find the opinion statement and underline it
2. Use the rubric to evaluate the opinion statement.
I’m going to hand out these for you to use, and I’ll be moving around to answer any questions
that you have.
If running short on time, evaluate the essays as a whole group, but be sure to allow students to
find and evaluate opinion statements without too much prompting from the teacher.
As you observe the students working in pairs, provide support for them. If they have difficulty
identifying the opinion statement or evaluating it with the rubric, model for them again how to
do it. You may need to review what a good opinion statement is and help them evaluate the ones
in the essays.
IV. Students Evaluate and Revise their Own Opinion Statement
Great job everyone. Now we’re going to do the same thing, but instead of using someone else’s
essay, you’re going to use the one you wrote. Here’s what I would like you to do. I will hand
each of your essay that you wrote previously and a fresh copy of the rubric (or a piece of paper
and the students can copy the rubric from the board). I’d like you to do the following on your
own:
1. Find the opinion statement and underline it
2. Use the rubric to evaluate the opinion statement.
3. Then, revise your opinion statement to make it stronger. This may mean being clearer
about your opinion or moving it to the front of your essay. You can write your revised
opinion statement right on essay.
I’ll walk around to help. When you’re done, I’ll collect your essay and rubric.
Wrap-up:
Today we learned a lot about opinion statements. We learned that they state the author’s
opinion; they are clear, and they come early in an opinion essay. You did a great job creating a
rubric and using it to evaluate some opinion essays. Next time we will use what we learned about
opinion statements to plan our own opinion essay.
8 DAY 2
I. Teacher Models Planning
Opening:
Last time we learned a lot about opinion statements. Can anyone remind me of some of the
things we learned about opinion statements? Students should be able to respond, “We learned
that they state the author’s opinion; they are clear, and they come early in an opinion essay.”
You did a great job creating a rubric and using it to evaluate some opinion essays. Today we will
use what we learned about opinion statements to plan our own opinion essay.
Teacher Modeling:
First I’m going to model how to plan a persuasive essay and how to create a good opinion
statement. Then you will have a chance to do it with a partner and finally by yourself. First, we
need a topic, and here’s the one for the paper I’ll plan for you.
“Traffic in many cities has gotten very bad. Sometimes it takes drivers over an hour to get
home from school or work, and a lot of people complain about the traffic. One way to
reduce the traffic is to make everyone who is gong to school or work carpool with someone
else. Write an opinion essay describing your opinion about whether people going to school
or work should be required to carpool in your city.”
That’s an interesting question. Sometimes when you read a prompt like this, it’s hard to know
what you want to say. One way to help figure it out is to use a For or Against chart (show the
chart on the board). The way I use this is to list the reasons for and the reasons against the idea.
In this case the idea is whether people going to school or work should be forced to carpool. Then
after I list all of the reasons for or against that I can think of, I look back at the chart and decide
which opinion I want to take in my paper.
Here’s my For and Against chart. Let’s see, one reason I’m for the idea of required carpooling
is that it would reduce traffic (write the reasons on the chart where students can see). Also the
reduced traffic would mean less pollution. Another reason is that it might give people a better
change to get to know their neighbors. (add additional reasons or replace any of these reasons
with your own). Now let’s think of some reasons that I would be against this idea. First it would
not make sense if you already took the bus. Also, it might be difficult if you didn’t live near
anyone from your school or work. Also it would be really hard if you had to go for a doctor’s
appointment or a sports practice after school because you couldn’t go straight from school. Also,
if you were carpooling with someone who is late a lot, it might make you late too. (add additional
reasons or replace any of these reasons with your own).
Now I think that I’ve got enough reasons in the for and against columns. It’s time for me to
decide which position I want to support. Well I think the reasons against required carpooling are
pretty good, but I think the reasons for carpooling are stronger. I think that requiring people to
carpool to work and school would have a big impact on traffic and the environment. So I’m
going to put a check mark on the For side of my chart because that’s the opinion I’ll present in
my paper.
9 Before I write my opinion statement, I want to decide which of the For reasons that I’ll use in the
paper. What I’ll do is number them from the one that I think is the strongest (less traffic) to the
weakest (getting to know neighbors). I’ll make sure to have at least 3 in my paper.
Now I’ll write my opinion statement. If I want I can just write it, but if I’m having trouble
thinking of how to phrase it, I can use a sentence frame. These are examples of good opinion
statements that can be modified for different opinions. Show students the list of sentence stems.
So I could use this stem “I think that ______________ because ____________.” To make it
work for my topic, I could write, “I think that people should be required to carpool to work and
school because it would improve lots of things in our city.”
Let’s have a look at my opinion statement and evaluate it with our rubric. (Show rubric to
students). Discuss with them each point of the rubric and describe how it meets the criteria.
I’m not going to write out the whole essay now, but I’ve got a good plan already. My opinion
statement is clear. I’ll add an introduction to the topic and some more information for my
introductory paragraph. Then I will use the reasons that I thought of in the For and Against
Chart for the body of my paper.
II. Students Plan in Pairs
Supported Practice:
Now I’m going to have you and your partner plan an opinion paper. I’ll give you a For and
Against Chart and the list of the sentence frames. At the top of the paper, there are two prompts.
Let me read them to you. You and your partner choose one of them and plan an essay. As you
work I’ll be here to answer any questions.
After the pairs have finished planning their essay, students will evaluate each other’s opinion
statement.
Now that you’ve all finished, I want you to swap papers with another pair. Then use the rubric to
evaluate their opinion statement. Remember to provide comments so that they can improve it.
III. Independent Planning
The last thing we’ll do today is to plan an opinion essay independently. Now I’ll give each of you
another sheet that has two prompts, the For and Against Chart, and the sentence stems. Choose
one of the prompts and use the charts and stems to plan your opinion essay.
Give time for students to plan and write.
Collect students’ essays at the end for analysis with rubric.
10 IV. Assessment section
In order to evaluate the success of the lesson, I will assess several parts of the lesson. On day
one, I will evaluate:
•
•
Students’ ability to identify and evaluate opinion statements from sample texts. To
evaluate this, I will see how many students were able to identify the opinion statements in
the sample texts and how well there were able to assess them.
Students’ revision of their own opinion statements. To evaluate students’ revisions, I will
compare the original text with the revised text, and using the rubric determine which
version was better.
On day two, I will evaluate:
•
•
•
Students’ collaborative plan for an opinion essay focusing on the opinion statement. To
evaluate the students’ plan, I will assess their opinion statement using the rubric designed
to assess the initial writing sample.
Students’ evaluation of each other’s opinion statement using the rubric. I will assess
students’ ability to evaluate each other’s opinion statements by looking at their response
and comments.
Students’ plan for their own opinion essay. I will assess each student’s individual plan by
evaluating the opinion statement using the rubric originally developed for the pretest
assessment. I will also compare the opinion statement in the new plan to that in the
pretest.
Resources:
For and Against Chart:
Sentence Frames:
Student Writing Sample:
11 Rubric:
12