How to Teach Students an Opinion Writing Introduction in 2nd Grade

As students move through opinion writing, they eventually reach a point where stating an opinion and giving reasons is no longer the hard part. The next challenge is helping them step back and introduce the topic for the reader.

In opinion writing, an introduction gives readers context. This introduction helps introduce the topic before the writer states an opinion. It tells them what the writing will be about before the writer states an opinion. In second grade, this might be a single sentence. In upper grades, it may grow into a short paragraph. At every level, students benefit from explicit instruction and repeated practice.

This post focuses only on helping students introduce the topic and does not cover stating an opinion or giving reasons.

If you’re looking for help with other parts of opinion writing, these posts may be useful:

• 7 Ways to Introduce Opinion Writing
• Picture Books to Teach Opinion Writing
• Teaching How to State an Opinion
• Teaching How to Supply Reasons
• Teaching How to Conclude the Opinion Writing
• Teaching Ideas to Solidify Students’ Understanding of Opinion Writing

Introducing the topic is an important part of opinion writing because it helps readers understand the writer’s main idea. Once students learn how to start their writing clearly, they can focus on supporting their opinion with reasons and examples. This guide to teaching opinion writing in elementary school explains how introductions fit into the larger opinion writing process.

When to Teach Introductions in an Opinion Writing Unit

Although introductions appear at the beginning of an opinion paragraph, I do not teach them first. I treat introductions as a structure skill, not an idea-generation skill.

Before students write introductions, they need a solid understanding of:

• How to clearly state an opinion
• How to generate and organize reasons

Once students can consistently write an opinion statement and support it with reasons, introductions make much more sense. At that point, students already know what their writing will be about, which helps them introduce the topic clearly.

Before this stage, I often provide students with:

• a shared class introduction
• a short list of introductions to choose from

This allows students to focus on developing opinions and reasons without practicing incorrect introduction structures.

Explicitly Teach What an Opinion Writing Introduction Does

When introducing this skill, I explain that an opinion writing introduction:

• tells the reader what the topic is
• comes before the opinion statement
• does not usually state the opinion

Using an anchor chart, I model several ways an author might introduce a topic. I use familiar content such as recess, pets, food, or classroom routines so students can focus on structure rather than new vocabulary.

Since students have already seen introductions during earlier weeks of the unit, this lesson tends to move quickly. After a few examples, we shift to analyzing what makes an introduction effective.

Use Picture Books and Student Writing Samples

As you read through students’ opinion writing samples, draw students’ attention to how the author introduces the topic. On an anchor chart and record solid examples of introductions from writing samples. If you’ve been reading books that demonstrate opinion writing, revisit them and draw students’ attention to how the text introduces the topic.

In my picture books for opinion writing post, I share 19 opinion writing mentor texts you can use to study introductions, opinions, and reasons.

Not all of them are explicitly opinion writing, but you can glean some parts of the opinion writing format from them. They also make jumping points into good discussions about quality opinions and reasons as well as the idea of when authors can deviate from a standard format of writing.

In this post about solidifying students’ understanding of opinion writing, I go into detail about using student samples with a rubric or a checklist. As you spend this week working on helping students introduce the topic, gather samples, and keep them year after year to support your opinion writing unit.

Free Digital Anchor Chart of Picture Books

Would you like a free digital anchor chart of the picture books in this blog post? Click the image below and sign up to receive a link to copy this fully-editable Google Slides file. Use it as a starting point to create your own classroom anchor chart for opinion writing.

Teach the Difference Between Weak and Strong Introductions

When you go through many examples of opinion writing, you might come across some introductions that are not so good. It’s definitely a good idea to not only model strong introductions but also call out weak introductions in writing samples. Of course, if it is a student writing sample, remove the name and don’t use any writing samples with weak introductions from current students.

Weak introductions often include an opinion, like “___ is fun.” or “I like ___.”

Weak vs. strong introductions also depend on your grade level and students’ writing ability. For some students and in the younger grades, having a simple introduction vs. no introduction is great. Other students will need to work on adding to their introductions.

Here are a few examples of strong introductions for 2nd-grade students:

• There are many different kinds of candy at the checkout line.
• Everyone has a favorite dinner dish that they like to eat.
• Have you ever eaten the world’s best ice cream?
• Stepping on dog poop is disgusting!
• While walking in the forest, I can hear the birds chirping and the leaves crunching under my feet.

Ways Students Can Introduce a Topic

Writing an introductory statement for opinion writing is very similar to writing an introduction for informational writing. Students can use a variety of different questions, statements, or descriptions to introduce the topic and then move into stating their opinion.

I introduce these options gradually and let students practice one or two at a time before mixing them.

The following are some ways students can introduce their topic. Can you match some of them to the example introductions above?

• Use a question
• State an interesting fact
• Use a shocking statement
• Define or explain the topic if it is unfamiliar to your audience
• Describe the topic or setting to create a picture in the reader’s mind

This is not an exhaustive list, but it will get students started. Once they have mastered these, see if they can come up with a few more ways to introduce their topic.

Use Sentence Frames to Scaffold Introductions

Like all of the components of opinion writing, I help students find success by providing scaffolding sentence frames. Some sentence frames are basic. Some are more advanced. Start with more basic sentence frames as students become fluent with the easier ones, and challenge and encourage them to use more complex sentence frames.

While you can provide students with sentence frames, you can also create sentence frames from the list of opinion statements you’ve generated from real-world examples. To do that, take away the content-specific words. You might need to rearrange the sentence for it to work with a specific topic, but often you will discover some higher-level academic language in these examples.

Here are a few sentence frames that can be used for opinion writing. These sentence frames introduce the topic but intentionally stop short of stating an opinion.

• There are many different kinds of ____ at ____.
• Everyone has a favorite ____ that they like to ____.
• Have you ever ____ the world’s best ___?
• ___ are ___ that help ____.
• Many ___ do not ____.
• Did you know that ____ can ___?

Practice Introductions Orally and in Writing

Oral practice solidifies students’ depth of understanding of the process and structure of opinion writing. It triggers a different part of the brain from writing and helps move the academic language from short-term memory to long-term memory.

Start with whole group practice using the sentence frames. Continue with a small group or partner practice. I go into detail about cooperative learning strategies to use for whole-group, partner, and small-group practice in the blog post about solidifying students’ understanding of opinion writing.

Here are a few ideas where students can practice speaking and writing about introducing their opinion statements:

• Provide an opinion statement to students. Have them turn to a partner and have the partner introduce the opinion. Switch roles on the next opinion statement or require the other partner to give a different introduction.
• Give students a set of introductions and opinion statements that are cut apart. Have them match the pairs up and then explain how the introduction is not an opinion and which one comes first in writing.
• Use the introduction examples from real-world texts or student samples and have students highlight the content-specific words. Have them rewrite the sentence using a different topic or three different topics.

Teaching students to introduce their topic with opinion writing with these simple teaching ideas. Use familiar books and student writing samples to explore how others introduce the topic and use sentence frames to scaffold students’ writing. When students understand that an introduction sets the topic for the reader, their opinion writing becomes clearer and more intentional.

How This Fits Into an Opinion Writing Unit

Teaching introductions works best as part of a structured opinion writing unit. Students benefit from repeated routines, clear language supports, and daily opportunities to apply what they are learning.

If your students struggle to move from prompts to complete opinion paragraphs, pairing strong instruction with sentence frames and guided practice makes a noticeable difference.

Opinion Writing Unit

Are you interested in an Opinion Writing Unit that develops students’ academic language through engaging games and activities? Here’s a blog post all about it.