Lesson Plan Outline

Class being taught: Advanced Level

(Reading) / Social Studies
Pre-Assessment
The proficiency level ranges around from advanced medium and low
reading level in the classroom.
Course Objective
Help non-native English speakers improve their reading
proficiency level.
Lesson Objective(s) The students will be able to
Learners will be able determine whether a sentence is
either fact or opinion.
Learners will be able to justify why those sentences are
facts or opinions.
Overview

Materials

Article
Markers
White board
Projector
Computer

Housekeeping
Technology Component
Write Agenda on
projector
the board
Bring the materials
needed for this lesson plan.

Learners are, right

now, learning about the
U.S. presidency elections.
With the article,
learners will be taught how
to determine the difference
between a fact and an
opinion.
Review/Development, and Time
Anticipatory Set (10 mins) - I will have the students write two facts and one opinion about
themselves. Once they are finish with that, I will have some of them share their answers to the class. I
will check and see if they were right or if they need some help understanding what facts and opinions
are.
o By doing this, I can assess whether they have any previous knowledge about
facts and opinions or if they dont exactly know the difference.
Introduce topic (15 mins) - I will tell learners that not everything they read on the internet is
true. They will have to figure out whether the information is either filled with facts and opinions.
o I will explain the difference between fact and opinion. Write this on the board
for the students to remember.
An opinion is a statement that a person believes to be true but it
cannot be measured against an objective standard.
Opinions can beging with the phrases I believe,
I think, etc.
Contains emotions, adjectives
A fact is a statement that can be proven true (or false) with some
objective standard.
Guided practice (10 mins) - After learning about facts and opinions, practice with the whole
class. I will have these as strips of paper and randomly paste it on the learners chair. I will have them
read each statement out so they can listen at first.
Allow the students to refer back to the definition on facts and opinions and the
examples written below it.
Project the previous questions with the correct answer.

 Independent practice (20 mins) - I will give learners an article that I found online and describe
what the article is about. They will read about it and I will provide them the worksheets that goes
along with it. This time, I will remove the definition of facts and opinions to see whether they can do it
on their own. I will tell them that after reading the article, they have to look for 5 opinions and 5 facts
and write it on the worksheet. Afterwards, I want the learners to rewrite those 5 opinions so that it will
become facts, and rewrite the 5 facts in order to be opinions.
Assignment/Practice
Learners will do a
practice on determing fact/
opinion and justifying it
Learners will read
an article and write 5 facts
and opinions. They will
then rewrite the sentence
for it to change from fact to
opinion and vice versa.

Philosophical Justification
I will use this topic because knowing facts and opinions
help with reading comprehension. They can also determine
whether the information their reading about is actually realiable
to use or to beleive.

Contingency Plan
If the students finish early, I want them to look for an
article online related to social studies. They will have to circle
any facts and underline any opinions they found.

Presidential Elections
Kenneth Beare
This year, Americans elect on a new president on November 8th . It's an important event in the United States.

It happens once every four years. Currently, the president is always elected from one of the two main parties in
the United States: the Republicans and the Democrats. There are other presidential candidates. However, it is
unlikely that any of these "third party" candidates will win. It certainly hasn't happened in the last one hundred
years.
In order to become the presidential nominee of a party, the candidate must win the primary election. Primary
elections are held throughout each state in the United States in the first half of any election year. Then, the
delegates attend their party convention in order to nominate their chosen candidate. Usually, as in this election,
it's clear who will be the nominee.
However, in the past parties have been divided and choosing a nominee has been a difficult process.
Once the nominees have been selected, they campaign throughout the country. A number of debates are
usually held in order to better understand the candidate's' points of view. These points of view often reflect their
party's platform. A party platform is best described as the general beliefs and policies a party holds. Candidates
across the country by plane, bus, train or by car giving speeches. These speeches are often called 'stump
speeches'. In the 19th century candidates would stand on tree stumps to deliver their speeches. These stump
speeches repeat the candidate's basic views and aspirations for the country. They are repeated many hundred
of times by each candidate.
Many people believe that campaigns in the United States have become too negative. Each night you can see
many attack ads on the television. These short ads contain sound bites which often distort the truth, or
something the other candidate has said or done. Another recent problem has been voter turnout. There is often
less than 60% turnout for national elections. Some people don't register to vote, and some registered voters
don't show up at the voting booths. This angers many citizens who feel that voting is the most important
responsibility of any citizen. Others point out that not voting is expressing an opinion that the system is broken.
The United States maintains an extremely old, and some say inefficient, voting system. This system is called
the Electoral College. Each state is assigned electoral votes based on the number of senators and
representatives that state has in Congress. Each state has two Senators. The number of representatives is
determined by the state's population but is never less than one. The electoral votes are decided by the popular
vote in each state. One candidate wins all of the electoral votes in a state. In other words, Oregon has 8
electoral votes. If one million people vote for the Republican candidate and one million and ten people vote for
the Democratic candidate, all 8 electoral votes go to the democratic candidate. Many people feel that this
system should be abandoned.

taken from: http://esl.about.com/od/readingintermediate/a/r_election.htm

Name: ______________________

Presidential Elections

Read the Presidential Elections article. Write down 5 facts and 5 opinions that can be found in the article. Give
justifications as to why you chose fact or opinion as your answer.

Facts (5):

Opinions (5):

Name: ______________________

Presidential Elections With A Twist

Read the Presidential Elections article. From the 5 facts and 5 opinions that you previously wrote, change the
sentence so that the facts will become opinions and the opinions will become facts.

Facts (5):

Opinions (5):

Determine whether the statements below are FACTS or OPINIONS.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Presidents are elected once every four years.

Abraham Lincoln was the best president ever.
Everyone is always excited when the election time comes.
Voters cast ballots for a set of members of the U.S. Electoral College.
President Obama is ineligible for re-election due to term limits in the

Constitution.
6. Candidates win because they are intelligent and friendly.
7. Debates are conducted to determine who has the answers to the countrys
problems.
8. Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to run for President in 1872.
9. I beliEve the Republicans and Democrats have similar views.
10.
I think the president this year will be a woman.

After doing this lesson plan for learners with advanced reading level, I was struggling to find an article
that was advanced level and what type of activity to do with it. I was thinking of different ways to integrate
reading and the other skills such as speaking, writing, and listening but I dont think I did a very good job. I
only had students write a justification as to why they chose that certain answer. Since I was limiting my time to
60 mins because thats the usual class time, I wanted to do more activities with the learners but knew there
wasnt a lot of time to do so. I was thinking of having the learners look online for another article and they have
to look for facts and opinions by circling and underlining. I also had to keep in mind that advanced level
learners are able to do more challenging work. I found an activity but figured it might be too easy for them do
complete.