Lessons & Units :: Fact and Opinion 3rd Grade Unit

Lesson 2: Distinguishing Facts from Opinions

Lesson Plan

Ramona Quimby, Age 8 | 860L

Ramona Quimby, Age 8
Learning Goal
Identify and describe facts and opinions in different types of books.
Duration
Approximately 50 minutes
Necessary Materials
Provided: Independent Practice Worksheet
Not Provided: Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary; Several books in a variety of genres: biographies, atlas, almanac, self-help books, fiction chapter books, historical fiction books, encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, and mysteries from classroom or school library

  • Teacher Modeling

    will review what we learned in Lesson 1 about where to find facts and opinions. I will show several choices of resources (teacher’s choice) and read a sentence from one resource (identified by the teacher). I will discuss if this sentence is a fact or an opinion and which resource I could find the information in. I will model how to locate the information in the correct resource. For example, “Penguins cannot fly.” is a fact and would be found in an informational book about penguins or an encyclopedia. “The character is excited about riding the school bus.” is an opinion and can be found in Ramona Quimby, Age 8.

  • Think Check

    Ask: How did I determine which book to find certain facts and opinions? Students should respond that you first identified the sentence as either fact or opinion and then thought about in what type of book the reader would find that sentence.

  • Guided Practice

    will listen as the teacher reads 2–3 more statements from books and determine if they are facts or opinions. We will discuss where to find this information and why we think it would be in that resource.

  • Independent Practice

    will determine if statements are facts or opinions and use classroom resources to find the information in the Scavenger Hunt. (Student Independent Practice is provided below in Teacher and Student Materials.)

Build Student Background Knowledge

Share an opinion from Ramona Quimby, Age 8. For instance, on page 83, when Ms. Quimby tells Ramona she is ridiculous for deciding to hate tongue, only after she knew what it was. Explain that tongue is a cow's tongue that is used in many culture's diet. For example, tongue can be found in Mexican cooking (in tacos or burritos) or in Jewish cooking, as a dish called brisket.

Texts & Materials

Standards Alignment

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User Comments

Great concepts. Would be interesting to expand this or include a discussion about internet resources. Seems highly likely that many kids are going to skip books and use the internet or just ask Siri.

Submitted by heather_rusch_1246103 on 1/19/17

Great resources! well put together.

Submitted by tvlb_1961391 on 9/10/16

Simple, interesting and covers all necessary elements of a required lesson plan.

Submitted by Shukla Kapoor on 2/20/15