Lesson 1: Locating Facts and Opinions in a Newspaper
Lesson Plan
- Learning Goal
- Identify the difference between fact and opinion in newspapers.
- Duration
- Approximately 50 minutes
- Necessary Materials
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Provided: Independent Practice Worksheet
Not Provided: Newspapers (enough for all students or groups of students to share), preferably Sunday papers
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Teacher Modeling
will introduce a newspaper and explain how it is divided into different sections based on interest. I will explain that many articles in a newspaper are factual and many are opinion-based. I will also explain that we are going to be looking at the newspaper to find which sections contain factual articles and which sections contain opinions. I will model identifying one factual article and one opinion-based article.
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Think Check
Ask: How did I identify facts and opinions in the newspaper? Students should respond that you read each article and looked for facts about real people in real places, without persuasive language such as "should" or "must." You also looked for sentences that gave you clues about the author's own opinions. You also used titles of articles to determine whether the article would be fact based or opinion based.
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Guided Practice
will look through the newspaper and discuss what we discover. We will discuss an article on the front page and identify the facts in the article. We will flip through other sections (classifieds, art and music) and discuss if these articles are fact or opinion-based.
TIP: Ask students to prove their conclusions about fact and opinion-based articles.
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Independent Practice
will use the newspaper to find the items listed on the “Fact and Opinion Scavenger Hunt” worksheet. You will explain in which sections of the newspaper you found facts and opinions, respectively, and how you knew where to look. (Student Independent Practice is provided below in Teacher and Student Materials.) Note: You will need to provide newspapers for all students or have enough newspapers available for groups of students to share. We also suggest that you use a Sunday paper because of the variety of sections.
TIP: This is a good opportunity to introduce Internet-based news resources to students.
Texts & Materials
Standards Alignment
(To see all of the ReadWorks lessons aligned to your standards, click here.)
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This lesson was highly motivating to my students because of the use of the newspaper. It also presented "fact/opinion" in a different light and they really had think about their choices.
My 4th graders really struggle with the concept of fact and opinion. I can't wait to see if this lesson will help them *get* it.
Great idear for this lesson I will use it in new term thanks
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Great lesson plan. I think the students will have fun working in a group.