Fact and Opinion First Grade Unit

Unit plan for teaching students to determine if a statement is fact or opinion using informational text.  Lesson 1 - Identifying Opinion; Lesson 2 - Identifying Facts;  Lesson 3 - Form Opinion Based on Fact. Unit plan includes engaging activities, guided practice, think check, independent practice. Provides printable materials, building background knowledge and vocabulary. Teaching tips are highlighted. In order to view some of the materials, you must sign up, but it is free!

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Understanding
Extension suggestions: 

Extensions:

  • Have students identify facts and opinions during read alouds, shared reading, and guided reading by using the pictures and text.
  • Have students share their opinions about the stories they read in reading groups.
  • Have students discuss their opinions about their best part of a story or which characters they prefer. Ask them to use evidence or facts from the text to support their opinions.
  • Copy pages from a book that was read aloud and have students circle the opinion signal words they find. They can also underline sentences that are facts.
  • Write facts and opinions on an index card. Write a fact on one side of the card and an opinion on the other side. Have students identify which statement is a fact and which statement is an opinion and explain how they know this.
  • Students can complete a “Facts about . . .” worksheet for any book they read. (See Additional Activity A in Teacher and Student Materials).
  • In Shared Writing, rewrite some stories to include facts and opinions or rephrase a sentence to include the sentence starters “I think…,” “I feel…,” “I like…” or “I learned…”
  • Make a class fact and opinion book. Give each student a page for the book and have them write facts on one side and opinions on the other side of the page. Illustrate each page.
  • Have students use one opinion and one fact each in a writing exercise.
  • Have students circle opinion signal words in their own writing. Then have them keep an ongoing list of opinion words that they find while reading.
  • Identify facts during social studies, history, and science. Have students form opinions about what they are learning.
  • Students can create a fact paper chain for any social studies, history, or science unit of study. (See Additional Activity B in Teacher and Student Materials.)

References

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