Opinion Writing 3

Overview of the Water Cycle

First, we want to make sure students understand the water cycle.  This video is a basic overview and comes with a worksheet, with time stamps.  Watch the video once all the way through, then have kids take out this worksheet and take notes on the second viewing.  You can pause the video at the timestamps to ensure they are taking good notes.   This website, Nat Geo, has a bunch of Water Cycle Activities, like this one   National Geographic has a site for teachers with lots of water activities!  Once students have a solid understanding of how water moves around in our world, we need to focus in on California.  

"Until the Last Drop" is a great documentary, but is about a hour and a half long.  Have students take notes on this sheet.  There are five parts to the video and the information is pretty dense.  I suggest watching a part per day, and then having students free-write what they learned, what popped into their heads, just increase writing fluency, while having them starting to think about water conservation.  I also suggest printing the "Taking Notes" sheet and having them take notes by hand.

When this preliminary cycle is over, I recommend making a chart with the whole class: How do we solve the water problems in California?  Just list all the ideas - ridiculous or not, everything has equal value.  Later on, when you revisit the chart, you can cross off bad ideas, add new ideas, alter... But, this chart keeps the whole unit in focus. The final writing project is that students make a claim, an opinion, about the best way to solve the water problem in California and back it up with evidence!

Part Two: Introduce the Writing Project

1. View the Slideshow This slideshow is to introduce the idea to your class. 

2. Writing Time: Day One

 You can also Water Facts for Opinion Writing along with a writer's notebook just to get the fluency going, just to get ideas flowing.   Print the fact sheet for every student.  Read it together.  Students will choose three sentences to write into a paragraph. In their writer's notebooks, students take those facts that choose and try to compose them into a paragraph.  Students should have at least one paragraph.  However, students will be given 15 minutes of writing time, so they can keep writing, add more details, elaborate, etcetera.

3. Writing Time: Modeled text or not? 

This modeled text is straight from Lucy Calkins.  Today, students will read this text together, highlighting expert opinions.  This is just a preview day, so students know what an expert is, how to use quotation marks around someone else's words.  Later we will explicitly teach it - today is just a preview.  

(1) Have students read the text silently for three minutes.  

(2) Have students tell a partner what they remembered from the text. (Make a round-robin sharing?  Maybe put a chart in front of them and each kid has to write one thing they learned?) 

(3) Pass out highlighters and then re-read the text with students so the teacher is modeling fluent reading.  During this "shared reading" of the text, students are to highlight the words written by an expert.  Then, circle the types of punctuation used to signify the part that was copied from someone else, such as the quotation marks, the commas, the name of the person, etcetera.

(4) Finally, have a mini-discussion about why the author would use an expert in their arguments.  You can chart student responses or you can simply discuss.  Ask questions like "How is this more persuasive with an expert?"  or "How is the argument more powerful with this quotation?"  Students should give answers like "Experts are smarter" or "The facts seems more credible when a scientists says them."  

Writing Time:

Using the article and their writer's notebook, kids have 15 minutes to write their opinion about it.  Is tap water safer?  They can list reasons, reference the article.  This is a free-write fluency activity, getting their ideas flowing.  

4. Writing Time: Day Two

Opinion piece on why California needs more dams and why they don't 

4. Claims and Evidence

Sideshow & Worksheet

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x3qhmqkD5RBNSagh6-DpD0zSoPnpQ6XaOlxO6_VjZcw/edit?usp=sharing

3. Expert Quote Analysis  

This activity requires students to analyze different quotations from different "experts."  Students should be aware of what it takes to be an expert. Some quotes are given here with no context, no expert introduced, or an expert, who is not appropriate for the topic, or who says something inappropriate. Some quotes are given with a proper introduction of the expert, and appropriate information for the task. You can have the students cut out and sort, and then glue together and present; you could also have students choose one quote that they use on a freewrite  assignment.  

1. 1. Expert not properly introduced, expert not appropriate for topic, expert is outdated, expert is just plain wrong!

Part Three: Effects of Water problems