Preparing ELLs for Opinion Writing

As any teacher is well aware, before one unit is done, the planning for the next has already begun. So as we were fancying up our chapter books, nibbling on cheese and crackers and clinking our grown-up glasses to toast our information writing, our teacher brains were thinking about opinion writing!

We use the Units of Study in Opinion, Information, and Narrative Writing by Lucy Calkins, et al. as our writing curriculum.  The content and the workshop model presented by Calkins offer us a wonderful umbrella to work under. In the opinion unit, Writing Reviews, students create persuasive reviews of just about everything, including their own personal collections.

In this series, Preparing ELLs for Opinion Writing, we will be exploring the methods, scaffolds and strategies we've used in our classrooms to help ELLs grow as opinion writers.  While much of this work was done in an integrated first grade classroom, these ideas can easily be modified for other grade levels and settings. Here's what you can expect in this four part series:

Part One: Choosing Language Objectives

Part Two: Teaching Academic Language
Part Three: Developing Reasons
Part Four: Prioritizing Oral Rehearsal

Click HERE to jump in.