In my ever so humble opinion

I was banging my head against the wall today while trying to teach a lesson about Fact and Opinion. And that's a fact.

When I first started teaching, my first lesson was on place value. Ones, Tens, and Hundreds. I had to stop myself from exclaiming, "How can you not get this??!???" to a couple of the kids that didn't comprehend. But I learned to take it down a level and teach it to their level, and in different ways.

With fact and opinion, I still haven't figured out how to teach it to the lower levels. Yet I still find myself struggling mightily not to just scream, "What about this is so difficult??!!???"

I started by talking about how a fact was something that could be proven right or wrong. I used a student's shirt as an example. "A has a gray shirt on. Can we prove this?" The kids told me that we could look at the shirt to prove it. Excellent. Gold star. We proved that it's gray. "A's shirt is awesome. Can we prove this?" The kids told me that we could look at the shirt to see that it was awesome, and that proved it.

OK, clearly I'm doing something wrong. How about this one? "Spaghetti tastes delicious! Is that a fact or opinion?" "FACT!" the kids shout. "We can prove it by tasting it!!"

I tried to differentiate the two by saying that opinions are merely how someone feels or what they think -- something that not everyone in the world might agree with. But they just didn't get it.

At one point, I sat down in my chair and asked, "I am sitting in a chair. Fact or opinion?" At least 5 kids shouted, "OPINION!!"

1 or 2 kids may have even shouted, "ESTIMATE!" just because they like to shout random vocabulary words in the hopes they are right.

Teaching fact vs opinion is very hard. And I'm pretty sure that's an opinion, even though all of my kids would say it is a fact.

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?

The fact is, we cannot do that

Yesterday was a very interesting day.

We had a conference with a student's mother who told us that she thought we should put tape over her son's mouth to embarrass him into not talking so much. Though the thought had certainly crossed my mind, it's sad for a number of reasons. First, that she would think we COULD do that even if we wanted to, and second, that she would suggest that WE do it in class rather than her doing something herself.

During class, we were discussing fact vs. opinion. I asked if the following statement was a fact or an opinion -- Mister Teacher is a math teacher.

We all agreed that it was a fact. I then added a word, saying Mister Teacher is a great math teacher.

Many of the kids still said fact, and quite frankly, I was reluctant to correct them. :)