The goal of this lesson is to help students explore and identify fact and opinion statements in biographies and support their decisions. To assess students’ understanding of these concepts, have students read a biography of their choice and answer the following questions:

• When was this person born? Is this a fact or an opinion statement? What textual evidence helps you know if it is a fact or opinion?
• Find a sentence that signals someone’s opinion. What is the opinion? Whose opinion is it?
• Write one fact you learned from this biography. How do you know it’s a fact?
• Use the information you learned to write an opinion about this person.
• In your own words, explain the author’s opinion of this person.

Focus Question: How does the ability to distinguish between facts and opinions affect the way we interpret a biography?

Ask, “What is a biography?”

Record students’ responses on the board/interactive whiteboard and provide feedback or guidance for students as they share their ideas. (You may want to create an anchor chart on a piece of chart paper. Title the chart “Biography” and list the characteristics of a biography. This chart can then be hung in the room as a resource for students’ reference when needed.) Characteristics include the following:

• tells about a real person’s (the subject’s) life
• written by someone other than the subject
• shows that the writer knows about the subject
• describes the subject’s environment
• shows how the subject affects other people (significant contribution)
• states problems and obstacles the subject overcomes
• includes important events from the subject’s life
• states or implies how the author feels about the subject

Part 1

Say, “Both facts and opinions are found in biographies.”

Have students review the definition of fact and opinion. Guide students to understand the following definitions:

• Facts actually exist and are provable, observable, and measurable. They can be found in encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, and textbooks.
• Opinions are disputable. They are a person’s beliefs or judgments not founded on proof or certainty.

Hand out the sentence strips (L-5-3-1_Fact and Opinon Sentence Strips.docx) to individual students. Have each student read aloud a sentence strip, and have the group determine whether the statement is a fact or an opinion. As students go through this process, guide them to discuss signal words from the sentences that indicate someone is giving an opinion. Guide students to understand how factual statements can be proven. Note that a “factual” statement can be wrong. The statement is therefore inaccurate but not necessarily an opinion. The sentence strips should evoke good discussions about facts and opinions. You may choose to create an anchor chart of the information below to hang in the classroom so students can refer to this information in later lessons.

• Opinion signal words: good/bad, believe, think, always, never, should, best/worst, might
• Proving a fact: encyclopedia, dictionary, textbooks, atlas, almanac, some Internet sources, statistics

Have students read a biographical sketch about an author, such as those found on the inside cover of a book or from Web sites such as those listed in Materials. For approximately 5–10 minutes, have students discuss the biographical sketch with a partner. Provide guidelines, such as the following questions: Who wrote the sketch? What was the purpose? What facts were shared? What opinions were shared? Then write on the board/interactive whiteboard the following questions and have students discuss the answers:

• Who was the biographical sketch about?
• What factual information was given? How do you know these are facts? How would you prove these are facts?
• Are there any opinions in the biographical sketch? How do you know these are opinions? Give support from the passage to prove these are opinions.

Part 2

Distribute copies of the Biography Reading Guide (L-5-3-1_Biography Reading Guide.docx). Have students listen and take notes as you read aloud the picture book biography Odd Boy Out: Young Albert Einstein by Don Brown.

After you read the biography, call on students to respond to the reading guide questions, based on their notes.

• Who was the biography about? (Albert Einstein)
• What were two pieces of factual information presented about this person? (Possible responses: Albert Einstein discovered theories of relativity. He played the violin.) How do you know these are facts? (They can be proven by checking reliable sources.)
• What opinions did the person state about himself? What opinions did others state about him? (Possible responses: Albert Einstein was sometimes cruel to his sister. Albert Einstein’s teachers thought he was dull-witted.) Underline the words that signal these are opinions.
• What is your opinion of the person? (Possible responses: Albert Einstein was smart. He had crazy hair. He was weird, odd, and antisocial.)
• What was the author’s opinion of this person? (Guide students to see that the title of the text, Odd Boy Out, is one way the author expressed an opinion of Albert Einstein.) Refer back to the text to provide evidence of the author’s opinion.

Provide time for students to discuss their thoughts and share their responses. Allow students to extend their thinking by having them further discuss how they know their statements are facts or opinions.

• If students believe their statements are facts, have them suggest how this information could be proven (e.g., by looking in a dictionary, an almanac, an encyclopedia, the Internet, a map, a textbook, or a medical journal).
• If students believe their statements are opinions, have them discuss any signal words that may have guided them in making this decision such as good/bad, might, believe, should, always/never, and guess.

Part 3

Use the discussion from Odd Boy Out to model for students how to complete the Fact and Opinion graphic organizer (L-5-3-1_Fact and Opinion Graphic Organizer.doc).

Arrange students into small groups of no more than four. Give each group a picture book biography to read. Hand out the Fact and Opinion graphic organizer (L-5-3-1_Fact and Opinion Graphic Organizer.doc) to each group member and say, “Read the biography your group was given and complete the Fact and Opinion graphic organizer.”

Allow students approximately 20 minutes to complete this activity. As the groups are working, walk around and check students’ understanding of fact and opinion. Assist any student who is having difficulty and may need further guidance in completing this activity.

If time allows, have students share their graphic organizers with the class. As students share, clear up any potential misconceptions and clarify why a statement may or may not be correctly identified.

At the end of the lesson, make sure to review the focus question with students. Ask, “How does distinguishing between facts and opinions affect the way we read a biography?” Guide students to understand that biographies incorporate a mixture of facts and opinions. Explain that it is important to identify and understand the author’s bias. If the reader can detect the author’s bias, s/he will then have a better understanding of the passage and be able to compare the author’s bias to his/her own, thus creating a deeper understanding of the text.

Extension:

• Students who need additional opportunities for identifying fact and opinion may read one of the biographies listed under Related Resources. Support students in distinguishing between factual information and opinion statements found in their biographies. Have students write these statements on sentence strips and then hang them on a student-created bulletin board or on chart paper.
• Have students who are ready to go beyond the standard interview a person of their choice and write a short biography about that person. Make sure that students incorporate both facts and opinions in their biography. Allow students to share their biographies with a partner. Then have students identify the fact and opinion statements in each other’s writing.
• Challenge students to take factual statements and rewrite them as opinion statements and vice versa.
• Have students interview someone and write a newspaper article that provides a biographical sketch of the person. Students might submit these articles to a school publication.