Dear Colleague,

By now many of you have explored and plunged into teaching the Common Core Standards. (Even if your state did not adopt Common Core, you may want to explore the standards to guide your writing lessons.)

Common Core standards in the elementary grades require teachers to cover genres in three strands: Narrative, Informative, and Opinion.  The opinion strand seems to be the least familiar to primary teachers and is causing some initial anxiety.  But fear not!  Opinion is actually an easy form to introduce, and your students will have no difficulty coming up with their own topics to write about.  (Note: Just because the kindergarten standards ask for an opinion on a book, students should not be writing book reviews alone.  Kindergarten students come to school with loads of opinions on the best (or worst) food, games, classroom jobs -- you name it! Capture that enthusiastic expression!)

Like all forms of writing, I suggest you introduce the language (in this case opinion and support) and many models before you invite students to try it on their own.  Below you will find an introductory lesson on introducing the language.