This is a great lesson using the Empowering Writers' opinion cards. They are so quick and easy to pull out with any lesson that you want to have the students form an opinion. *I have attached the writing template below:)
If you do not have the cardstock set from EW, you can download the PDF directly from your HUB guide to print and use!
Our 2nd-grade students are working in section 6 of their Informational/Opinion guide. This lesson goes with Lesson 4: Exploring Opinions.
(If you are not a 2nd-grade teacher, you will still have this same lesson idea in your guide, just at an appropriate level for your students and you can easily adjust as needed!)
Using the book, What if Everybody Did That? and the "Make It Your Own" lesson template, the students were able to find an issue in the book that they wanted to explore more.
Make it your own... Community or school issues, as well as current events, may provide meaningful topics for opinion pieces and make children feel like they have a voice in decisions that affect their lives. Have children poll one another about their opinions on these issues and incorporate the results of the poll into an opinion piece. Research shows that students are more likely to follow classroom rules if they have had a voice in making the rules, so why not have your students write opinion pieces about appropriate classroom rules and consequences for failing to follow these rules.
- I started the lesson by reading the book aloud to the students. I
then picked ONE issue from the book. This read-aloud lends itself to many lesson ideas. If you like this lesson but are already finished with Earth Day then just pick a new issue from the book to explore more with student opinions. I asked students how humans treat the earth and went back to the example from the book where he throws the can out of the car window. I reminded them that not all of the time are the effects negative. Sometimes we do things to help the earth. From their responses, I created the chart. - Next, I handed out the red and green opinion cards. We discussed the vocabulary like and dislike, pro and con, and I pointed out the thumbs up and thumbs down to them. As I read through the list of ways we treat the earth, the students would hold up the correct card as to if that was a pro- something they liked or a con- something they disliked.
As the students help up the card and shouted out "Pro or Con" their teacher, Mrs. Harter, would add it to the list as we sorted the behaviors. It was SO fun and all students in the class were engaged for the entire lesson... WIN!
- After we had everything sorted, we looked at the orange cards that have sentence starters for framing up our opinion
statements. I love that these use kid-friendly language while still challenging them to be unique in their responses. Moving away from the I like or I dislike statements all of the time. We practiced orally how to make an opinion about the issue from the book: Throwing trash out of the window. Using the dislike sentence starters, we practiced each of them and then picked our favorite and I wrote it next to my picture on the chart. I then asked which of the items on the pro side would be a behavior that we would like to replace this bad behavior with? Students were able to point out "Pick up trash," and then we repeated the process of practicing the like sentence starters to frame up our statements. Here is what my modeled piece looked like after all of our discussion and oral practice. 
- Students then got to work choosing one thing they dislike and
then the opposite behavior that they like to write about. They were able to use the sentence starters independently. I attribute the practice we did orally to that.
The finished samples are super cute! AND.. look at those sentences!
REMEMBER: This book lends itself to many more lesson ideas that you can use in the coming days! Make it your own, and share your lesson with us all on my Facebook group Love to Write and Read All-Day!
I have attached the writing template below for you to use. (Nothing fancy, but ready to print!)
