Especially for Teachers

Bright Ideas Lesson Plans

Differences between fact and opinion

These activities have been successful in grades two, three and five.

In Reading/Language Arts, my students must learn the difference between fact and opinion. We use the advertisements to discuss the differences between the two. Students cut out pre-selected advertisements and discuss them in cooperative groups. Using two different colors of highlighters, students highlight the phrases that are facts in one color and the opinions in another color.

Other skills students must master in all grades are main idea, details, and summarization. Students cut out an interesting article and glue it to a colorful piece of construction paper. Then they highlight the main idea of each paragraph in one color highlighter and the details of the paragraph in another color. Underneath the article the students glue a half a sheet of writing paper. On this sheet, the students write a summary of the article that they just read.

Perhaps the activity my students enjoyed the most was using the television schedule to learn how to read a chart or graph. Students are asked to look at the nightly television "line-up", then choose what they would watch that night. Next, they write an expository writing describing the shows they watched, what time it was on, and why they wanted to watch each show. This ties the math skill in with practice writing for the Florida Writes. Every student has enjoyed this writing prompt (Even the students who normally find writing tedious or difficult)!

As you can see, these ideas are not novel. Many teachers already use one or more of these ideas in their classroom curriculum. However, for the few who may not have been aware of these ideas, they are great ways to teach certain skills to the students in quite an enjoyable format.

Sheryl Turner
Debary Elementary
Third Grade

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