Opinion Writing

This trimester we are starting a new genre of writing. During the first trimester we focused on personal narratives (writing about true events in your own life) and now this second trimester we will be focused mostly on opinion writing. We began last week by doing different activities to explore the difference between fact and opinion. After identifying those differences we began talking about giving reasons to support an opinion.

On Friday we read the book Hey Little Ant in which a boy is deciding whether or not to squish an ant on the sidewalk! They talk to one another and the boy gives reasons why he thinks he should squish the ant and the ant gives reasons why the boy should not squish him. The book ends with a question asking the reader what they think should happen. Our class discussed the reasons given by both the boy and the ant and students then wrote their opinions. Our group was benevolent and most students chose to save the ant :). Students wrote their opinion and used details from the text to support the opinion they chose.