Hello lovely hoppers! It's Kristen from
Ladybug's Teacher Files and I'm here to share some resources I am prepping for my 5th grade students for an upcoming unit....opinion writing! It's one of my favorite units in writing
—and my students always love it too (I mean, what elementary student doesn't love to share their opinion??).
Last year, I used a lot of free articles online to help my students research a variety of topics. I found these articles to be so helpful in not only guiding my students towards an opinion, but also in providing evidence they could use to support their point of view. One of the best (FREE!) sites I've seen is
Newsela:
Have you heard of this site? It's chock-full of high-interest articles, all based on current events students love to read about. The best part? The articles are leveled, so you can choose the best reading materials for your differentiated populations:
The free version of this site lets your students read articles at their levels and take quizzes as well.
But back to opinion writing.
There are so many articles that tie into great topics for opinion pieces:
Here are some of my students' favorite prompts from last year (all linked up to the Newsela articles!):
Another wonderful resource for your students is a new one I just happened upon recently:
Talking Points for Kids
This resource features 10 topics with kid-friendly articles designed to get kids talking...but they are also the perfect material for opinion pieces:
I'm so excited about these, I've already printed them all out! I will be using them before we tackle the Newsela articles, as the material is a bit easier to read.
I hope this was of help to those of you headed into opinion writing! Thanks so much for reading!
