So you’re on the hunt for an opinion writing activity that will make your students stop saying “What is an opinion again?” (cue the facepalm…)
Opinion writing is one of those concepts that is hard to grasp, especially for those kiddos who aren’t used to it. Maybe you’re tired of hearing your students say, “I’m borrrred” over and over again (I’ve heard that one too, friend.)
When I was an ESL teacher, it came time to do some WIDA ACCESS test writing practice with my fourth and fifth grade groups. I noticed that I really started losing them because of the emphasis on test-prep. My amazing coworker and I put our brains together and came up with a solution that these kiddos didn’t stop talking about for weeks!
That solution was spicy chips!! I’m talking… bring out a bag of Takis and you could get them to do anything. This is when I decided to create a digital and printable opinion writing lesson where students had to try different kinds of spicy chips and choose the BEST one. They had to state their claim and come up with solutions for WHY that was the best spicy chip.
Although I used spicy chips with my students, this lesson is designed to where you can use ANY snack. I can’t wait to walk you through this low-prep, step-by-step activity. Let’s jump in!
Click here to see this resource in my store
Step-By-Step, Detailed, Opinion Writing Lesson Plans
Although there are many components to this snack opinion writing activity, you won’t need to worry about getting lost in which activity to do when. These lesson plans include an “I can” statement for each lesson, materials, and easy-to-follow directions for what specifically to do on each day. Of course, keeping the needs of your learners in mind and taking into account how much time you have for your writing block, you can easily break these lessons into more than three days.
These lesson plans will give you the convenience of no stress, no planning, and very little prep for each day you are using them.
Digital & Printable Describing Food Worksheets & Teacher Anchor Charts
On the first day of this lesson, you will bring in oreos, pretzels, and hot cheetos for your students to try. If your students have specific food restrictions or they are really excited about a particular food item, you are more than welcome to change up which snacks you bring in.
Watch your students’ eyes light up as you bring out their favorite snacks as part of an opinion writing lesson!
After you try each snack item, your students will write down words to describe each one. There are 3 headings that your students will write their describing words under: Looks Like, Tastes Like, Other Describing Words. This is WONDERFUL vocabulary practice for your ELLs. You have 3 describing words worksheets to choose from:
Digital worksheet for use with Google Slides
Printable Worksheet
Printable Half-Sheet Worksheets to glue in your writing journals
After your students have filled out one snack at a time, You will write the answers that they share on your teacher opinion writing anchor chart. Set-up for these opinion writing anchor chart titles is shown above.
Opinion Writing Graphic Organizers with Sentence Starters to Guide Your Writers
The next step in this activity, is for your students to understand how to structure their opinion writing. It is easy for them to get stuck on how to get started, or how to elaborate in more detail if there isn’t some kind of organized structure in place for them to use while they plan their writing.
There are two opinion writing graphic organizer templates for you to choose from that you can easily use to differentiate with your students who may need some extra support. One of them has sentence starters in each section that your students can easily follow. This is SO helpful for your ELLs, especially those newcomers who have very little vocabulary. The other graphic organizer is blank for those students who may not need that extra support in place. There are digital and printable versions of both of these included as well.
This resource also includes opinion writing sentence starter posters and student sheets. This gives your students more freedom to choose which sentence starters they want to use, as they will have more of a variety of choices. You can display these on your board for the whole class to see, or you can print out the student sheets that have the exact same sentence starters so they can have a copy at their desk.
If you are having your students complete this part digitally, there is a digital sentence starter sheet included in the slides as well!
The opinion writing sentence starters will be your holy grail when you complete this activity. I know all too well how your kids will say, “I don’t know what to say next” or “I don’t know how to do this.” No matter if you’ve gone over it 2 or 28 times, the beauty of these sentence starters, is that it is all in one place, and each student gets their own copy. Saving you the headache of repeating yourself over and over again. And the best part? You can use these again and again for any other opinion writing activities you do throughout the year as well!
Favorite Snack Opinion Writing Prompts
So now it’s time to put it all together in one big opinion writing piece! Your students have worked so hard to gather all of their facts and reasons, and now it’s time to put those skills to practice.
There are two opinion writing prompts to choose from:
The Best Snack Opinion Writing
Let Me Convince You of the Best Snack
In the lesson plans, you will find directions on how to go about this portion of the activity by modeling how to take the information from their graphic organizers and transfer it onto their paper. This will take the guesswork out of this process because they will get to visually watch you do this in a mini lesson before they do start writing on their own.
If your students need practice typing on their computers, I have included both of these prompts digitally where they can complete this portion online. If you teach fourth or fifth grade and you have a population of ESL students, this will give them WIDA ACCESS writing test practice for when they take the ACCESS test in the spring. As simple as it may sound, this can be tricky for kids that age to navigate because they may be more accustomed to writing on a sheet of paper. When I was an ESL teacher, this was an activity that I desperately needed, especially for the digital component for my fourth and fifth grade groups. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything like this online, which is why I created it specifically with you and your students in mind! The more practice they can get doing a writing activity online where they have to take their thoughts and transfer it into a text box online, the better.
I hope that this “best snack opinion writing” activity will be an engaging resource to support your students as they navigate this skill, regardless if it’s new to them or not. If you have any questions about this resource please don’t hesitate to reach out and I will happily get back to you!
You can find this resource in my TPT store here!
Need some more writing activities? Check them out!
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