Opinion writing can be very challenging for students, especially when they have little experience with this genre of writing. I often find that my students have a difficult time with one, or ALL of the following:
- Stating their opinions.
- Generating strong reasons to support their opinions.
- Using details and examples to support their reasons.
This year when I introduced opinion writing, I decided to
take more of a collaborative approach, in which ALL students were able to
contribute ideas, and then draw on ideas from each other.
When we started our unit, we simply started with forming
opinions. I gave students multiple topics to think about, and asked them to use
post-its to write ANY opinion that they had on each topic. Students wrote and
posted their opinions around the classroom, and at the same time they were able
to read the opinions of their classmates.
These opinions led to some GREAT discussions, and gave
students a starting point for “stating their opinion” when it came time for
them to sit down and write.
Each time I assigned a new topic, we would also use this
collaborative approach to help students generate and share strong reasons to
support their opinions. During this particular lesson, students had to write
about the “Perfect Pet”. Once they formed an opinion, I had everyone use
post-its to share reasons why different pets make the perfect pet!
Again, this led to some great discussions, in which students
had to “defend” their reasons. It also helped students to develop strong
reasons that they would then be able to support with details and examples.
Finally, before sitting down to write their own opinion
essays, I had students work in groups to create outlines. This led to more
discussion of ideas, and helped students to narrow down their reasons and
examples. When students finally sat down to write their own pieces, they had a
variety of ideas to draw from.
Now I can’t wait to try this collaborative approach with INFORMATIVE WRITING!!
