How to Teach Your Child to Write an Opinion Paragraph

Welcome back to our series on How to Teach Your Child Paragraph Writing.  We'll be looking at several different types of paragraphs.  So far we have the basic detail paragraph HERE.  That is the best place to start.  The basic structure of an opinion paragraph is somewhat similar to the basic structure of the detail paragraph, so if you've read the previous post you'll be all good to go.

Today though, as we continue, I will show you the formula so that your child can write an opinion paragraph with ease.  There shall be no more crying at writing time.  Both you and your child are going to have amazing success!  

The first thing that we need to do is have the child give us their opinion.  Another word that we can use for opinion is 'think'.  So the child may say, "I think....."   or they could use words like, "I like......" or "I don't like....."

We need them to tell it to us in a sentence.

I.  My Opinion

Now we will begin to build our paragraph.

The next thing you want to do is to ask the child to give you a reason sentence about their opinion.  Continue asking for reasons about the topic until you have 4 or 5 of them.

                                    I.  My Opinion sentence

                                         a. Reason 1

                                         b. Reason 2

                                         c. Reason 3

                                         d. Reason 4

                                         e. Conclusion

Use narration and copywork if your child isn't ready to write from mind to paper yet.  Simply write out their sentences and have them copy it in their best handwriting later on.  

Here's my video on the basic structure of the opinion paragraph:

I'll be adding more short video's about How to Teach Your Child... Narrative, Expository, Compare/Contrast Paragraphs over the next week or so.  All we need to do is change some of the formula and voila, our children can write!