Johnny Appleseed Opinion Writing Broken Down

It's almost Johnny Appleseed Day! 

If you're joining in on celebrating this wonderful historical figure and are also teaching opinion writing, then this file will help you and your students.

Print off and bundle as student booklets.

This resource is based on the book; Johnny Appleseed by Reeve Lindbergh (see link below to YouTube reading). 

I have designed this scaffolded writing mini unit with first and second graders in mind.

This 52 page resource has been made to break down the steps of understanding and writing an opinion.

First of all, your students will learn to identify and provide examples of both facts and opinions.

 

Students will discuss purposes for writing an opinion.

Your class will then have opportunities to work with the structure of an opinion.

 

The three steps of opinion writing; introduction, reasons and conclusion will be dealt with separately prior to writing a fully structured opinion.

Here's an example of students learning to write an introduction only.
>>> Please note that the image below is taken from the first edition.  The file has been updated to included easier to read fonts, as seen in the screen capture images in this post. 

After reading the story about Johnny Appleseed students will put all parts of an opinion together by responding to topics.  

 

  

 

 

The file also includes generic opinion writing templates to write about your own topics. 

I find that requiring students to reflect on their writing based on a criteria already establish when I first introduce a genre helps me teach explicitly. This idea (seen below) should be revisited as you model your opinion writing throughout the unit and when children are working on their writing samples.

I have used an apple rating scale, which children can use to evaluate their writing. This evaluation tool was inspired by my 5 star skills freebie. I like to complete this with each child, one on one.  Students can color the apples accordingly.

Students can then publish their opinion writing piece using this blank writing paper (boy and girl image provided).

 

This is an added extra achievement notice (based on Common Core for first and second grade) for students when you have finished the mini-unit.

Johnny Appleseed Opinion Writing Printables for First and Second Grade

You may also like the range of apple themed videos on my YouTube playlist. I have collected videos about apples, apple life cycle, books, poems, songs and craft.  Click here to see more. 

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