Grade 6 Lesson 1 Item Page Lesson Plan Page 2 Student Activity Article Opinion Practice Activity Handout Page 5 Page 6
DETERMINING METHODS VISION-SETTING Marlins Think Tank: Sixth Grade Writing Lesson Plan #1 OBJECTIVE. What is your objective? Student will be able to: W.6.1. Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information. Introduce a topic or text clearly, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure in which related ideas are grouped to support the writer s purpose. Provide reasons that are supported by facts and details. KEY POINTS. What knowledge and skills are embedded in the objective? An opinion piece is generally written with the purpose of persuading others to accept the stated opinion. An argument is more valid if it is supported by facts and details (i.e. statistics and evidence). ASSESSMENT. Describe, briefly, what students will do to show you that they have mastered (or made progress toward) the objective. Students will write their own opinion piece on the following topic: Is extending the protective netting at Major League Baseball stadiums a good idea? Why or why not? OPENING (10 min.) How will you communicate what is about to happen? How will you communicate how it will happen? How will you communicate its importance? How will you communicate connections to previous lessons? How will you engage students and capture their interest? Students will enter class and immediately respond to the following questions on the board: Have you ever gone to a baseball game? Where did you sit? Who took you to the game? Did the audience catch any fly balls? Did anyone in the audience get hurt watching the game? After students have been given five minutes to write, the teacher will begin to take notes on the board as students share their brainstorming ideas. Students will share their experiences and then the teacher will say: Today we are going to talk about what an opinion is. We are going to read one article about the risks of attending baseball games and then we are going to formulate our own opinions and support it with strong evidence. That is what successful writers do! Let s begin! MATERIALS. Student notebooks
INTRODUCTION OF NEW MATERIAL (10 min.) How will you explain/demonstrate all knowledge/skills required of the objective so that students begin to actively internalize key points? Which potential misunderstandings do you anticipate? How will you proactively mitigate them? How will students interact with the material? Being able to write successfully means that you can construct a solid argument that has support. Imagine if I said to you, My team won the Little League finals last night! You might not necessarily believe me unless you saw my trophy, or if I brought you pictures of the team after we won. These are examples of support! Student notebooks Students will take the following notes: An opinion is a belief or view on something. A judgment formed about something not necessarily based on fact or knowledge. Synonyms - belief, judgment, thought(s), (way of) thinking, mind, (point of) view, viewpoint, outlook, attitude, stance, position, perspective, persuasion, standpoint. Everyone can have an opinion. Opinions cannot be proved. They are subjective to the person who believes it. People can have opinions about anything: favorite baseball team, favorite color, favorite food, favorite subject, favorite teacher, etc. When opinions are written down for others to read they should have reasons to back them up. A strong opinion piece has reasons to back up the opinion. Because I said so, or Because I feel like it, are not good reasons. Your reasons should be unemotional and based on fact in order to support or back up your opinion. GUIDED PRACTICE (10 min.) How will students practice all knowledge/skills required of the objective, with your support, such that they continue to internalize the key points? How will you ensure that students have multiple opportunities to practice, with exercises scaffolded from easy to hard? Now we will look at a few opinions from the two articles in class today. Opinion pieces are all around us, and there is a section in the newspaper dedicated to opinions. We will look at the first opinion article together, and you will work on your own for the second article. While we read, underline the topic, the opinion, and each example of support that you can find. Remember that while we read, we will underline the opinion in each portion, along with the reasons or support that each author uses. All 30 M.L.B. Teams Will Have Extended Netting Next Season Class will read the article: 30 MLB Teams will have Extended Netting Next Season (I Do) Teacher will model how to identify an opinion or evidence in the passage with supporting details. (We Do) Class will look for examples of two opinions and evidence. (They Do) Students will work collaboratively to find/ highlight all the other examples of opinions or evidence in the passage. You will need to know a couple of vocabulary words in order to be successful with our reading. Write these words down; the more vocabulary you know, the more brilliant you become. Essential Vocabulary: 1. Mandate- the authority to carry out a policy or course of action, 2. Recommendation- a suggestion or proposal as to the best course of action 3. Fractures- the cracking or breaking of a hard object or material. (Article taken from: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/sports/baseball/baseball-netting.html)
INDEPENDENT PRACTICE (20 min.) How will students independently practice the knowledge and skills required of the objective, such that they solidify their internalization of the key points prior to the lesson assessment? After discussing the article and the opinions shared in it, students will brainstorm and write their own opinion piece on the following topic: Is extending the protective netting at Major League Baseball stadiums a good idea? Why or why not? They will first be required to state the topic, their opinion, and use three pieces of evidence/support from the article. Once they have completed this, they may begin writing an opinion essay. The essay should include an introductory paragraph, two body (supporting) paragraphs, and a conclusion. If students finish early, they will be expected to trade papers with a partner. They will write their name at the bottom of their partner s paper and provide their partner with feedback on the essay. The feedback should be constructive. Lesson Assessment: Once students have had an opportunity to practice independently, how will they attempt to demonstrate mastery of the knowledge/skills required of the objective? The lesson assessment will be the product of the time utilized during independent practice. CLOSING (5 min.) How will students summarize and state the significance of what they learned? If there is still time, three students will share their opinions. Teacher will conclude lesson by sharing: What we learned today can help us in the future when we find a cause that we believe is important. In order to change the world and make it a better place, we need to have ideas and opinions that are strongly supported with logical reasoning and evidence.
Watching a baseball game will be safer in all major league ballparks during the 2018 season. The Arizona Diamondbacks and the Tampa Bay Rays announced on Wednesday they would extend the protective netting behind the dugouts in their ballparks in time for opening day, meaning all 30 teams have decided to exceed the recommendations for enhanced safety issued by Commissioner Rob Manfred in December 2015. The announcement came a day before Manfred was expected to issue a mandate at baseball s quarterly owners meetings in Los Angeles that all teams must extend their netting to at least the far end of the dugouts by the beginning of the coming season. Providing baseball fans with a variety of seating options when they come to the ballpark, including seats behind protective netting, is important, Manfred said in a statement. Major League Clubs are constantly evaluating the coverage and design of their ballpark netting and I am pleased that they are providing fans an increased inventory of protected seats. A league spokesman said the announcements by the Diamondbacks and the Rays on Wednesday rendered a commissioner s mandate unnecessary. Major League Baseball s previous recommendation in 2015, calling for all teams to extend their netting from the area behind home plate to the beginning of each dugout, came in response to a serious head injury sustained by a fan at Fenway Park. The movement to extend the netting gained momentum when three fans were seriously injured at Yankee Stadium during the 2017 season. In May, a young boy was hit in the head by the barrel of a shattered bat that flew into the stands just beyond the visitors dugout. In July, a man was injured when a line drive hit by the Yankees Aaron Judge struck him in the head as he sat in a lower-level seat down the right-field line. And in September, a 2-year-old girl suffered facial fractures when she was hit by a line drive off the bat of the Yankees Todd Frazier. The last incident prompted the Yankees, who had been reluctant to extend their netting out of fear of alienating fans in their high-priced lower-level seats, to announce on the final day of the regular season that they would install extended netting for the start of the 2018 season. In January, the Yankees announced they would extend the protective netting beyond the league s recommendation and into the outfield. During the 2017 All-Star break, the Mets extended the netting at Citi Field down both foul lines.
Write your own opinion, based on the following topic: Topic: Is extending the protective netting at Major League Baseball stadiums a good idea? Why or why not? Opinion: Support/Evidence: 1) 2) 3)