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Monday, February 08, 2010

You're entitled to your opinion

Last Friday, I gave a Fact vs. Opinion test, and in my ever so humble opinion, there are several kids who just don't get it -- and that's a fact!

Apparently, "Broccoli tastes nasty!" is a fact to some. As is, "John Cena is awesome!"

Conversely, it is merely one's opinion that "One yard equals three feet," or that "There are 50 states in the USA."

Any Language Arts teachers out there have a great way of teaching fact vs opinion?

5 comments:

Becca said...

I just borrowed a book from a fellow teacher: Breaking the Code in Reading Comprehension by Kathleen Harden and Stacy McGough that has a lesson on Fact and Opinon that I am planning on trying next week. So I'm not actually sure how well this would work, but it seems good.

Basically the lesson says that you can't pick out facts(because they are all so different), only opinions. Facts are what's left when you take the opinions away. Opnions have key words that you should look for (Like, good, pretty, important, and think. These are actually catagories of words so like is the same as love, etc.

So to start the lesson I plan on going through and having each student make a list of words that each fits the above catagories. Then we will use these words to help us identify opinions.

This is going on my anchor chart: An opinion is never true or false, but a fact is always true or false.

free online education said...

Everybody is entitled to their own opinions. As long as they are responsible to whatever they say.

Mister Teacher said...

Becca, let me know how that works out and how effective it is!

Online, um, yeah, but we're not debating anyone's opinion, we're debating what MAKES something an opinion...

Mrs. H said...

Mr Teacher, Please Email me. I have been teaching for 12 years, 6 of them in third grade. I have some great ideas for fact and opinion. I also have a few questions about Dallas isd, if you don't mind. (We are moving at the end of the summer.)

Thanks,

LeAnne Hardeman

MrsLeAnneHardeman@gmail.com

Mark Pennington said...

Here is a nice scope and sequence for teaching Fact and Opinion with clear definitions and examples.