Opinion Writing

Our writing focus for this nine weeks is on opinion writing. We have been hard at work learning the differences between facts and opinions, and coming up with opinions of our own. This past week we began to look at how we use facts/reasons to support our opinion. I always love incorporating a good picture book into my mini lessons. Opinion writing is no different. Here are some of my favorite books for opinion writing...

Of course I don't read all of them aloud to my kiddos, but I did pick out my top five to use during my mini lessons this week. I believe it is so important to take new concepts slow with my second graders and allow for plenty of opportunity to model expectations. I do this with opinion writing by first having my students respond to prompts that are inspired by picture books.  We began with Hey, Little Ant.

After reading, we came up with reasons to support both of the opinions shown in the anchor chart below.

Then, I had my students choose which opinion they agreed with the most and they added reasons to support that opinion to their interactive graphic organizer.

We followed the exact same process for I Wanna Iguana, Talk, Oscar, Please!, Too Many Toys, and Earrings!.

As we continue to develop our opinion writing skills, I will gradually release my students into choosing their own prompts to write about. If you would like to check out my Opinion Writing Interactive Journal Prompts product you can find it here in my shop.