Learning Objectives

Students will understand the claims of an opinion piece and the evidence to support those claims. Students will develop reading strategies and improve comprehension. Students will have previously read the article and written a summary on it. Student will consider how to support their own ideas with evidence. 

Time Required

60 minutes 

Materials Needed

Zakaria, Rafia. “Domestic Violence and Coronavirus:  Hell Behind Closed Doors.” The Nation. 2 Apr 2020.  

• www.thenation.com/article/society/domestic-violence-coronavirus/. 

Obviously you can use any piece. I have also used Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “We should all be feminists” video which students enjoy, but either as a whole class activity or a homework assignment because of the format. 

Lesson Plan

I. Class will discuss the summaries they bring to class.

II. Discuss how we need to identify what the article wants from us and if the author makes a compelling case. Some newspaper articles just tell you what has happened. Others, which used to be called op-ed and are now sometimes called “guest essays” or “guest opinions” want something from you. We want to discover what they want and how they convince us to do it.  

III. Divide the class into 3 or 4 groups. Discuss in groups and then as a class:

• What is the point of the article, its central claim, the thesis statement?
• Who seems to be the intended audience and how can you tell?
• What is the original forum (when and where was the argument published)?
• What is the context for the argument (issues in the contemporary world that relate to the argument)?

IV. As a whole class, read the first paragraph aloud and decide: 

• what information/evidence the writer is using to back up their claim.
• how the writer ties the information/evidence to their claim

If the writer just presents information/evidence and doesn’t provide analysis, then they are leaving it up to the reader to create their own significance. The writer’s job is to make sure the reader reads information the way you want them to read it.  Without doing that, the writer loses power and coherence in their writing.

V. Ask the students to go through the next paragraphs of the article, paragraph by paragraph (group 1 does the second paragraph, group 2 the third etc.). 

Tell them that every paragraph is composed of important information that will help the reader understand the central claim of the essay (the thesis statement). Each paragraph may include: claim(s), evidence/information, connection, and explanation/analysis.

Tell the students they want to find:

• what information/evidence the writer is using to back up their claim.
• how the writer ties the information/evidence to their claim. 

V. Group discussion. Is the writer not only providing relevant evidence, but also telling the reader what conclusions they should draw based on that evidence? 

VI. Homework Reflection: Now that you have finished this activity, how can you apply it to your writing? What should you remember about how to analyze evidence? 

For Fun – Because “Opposite the Editorial Page” Has No Meaning Any More

Jackson Bryan. “The New York Times is retiring the word ‘op-ed’.” New York Post, 26 Apr 2021.

• www.nypost.com/2021/04/26/the-new-york-times-is-retiring-the-word-op-ed/

The New York Times will drop the term ‘op-ed’ from its pages — calling it “clubby newspaper jargon” that no longer makes sense given the way stories are placed online. 

The opinion pages will simply refer to columns by the paper’s staff writers and editorial board as editorials and pieces by external contributors as “guest essays.” 

Kathleen Kingsbury, head opinion editor, wrote, “The first Op-Ed page in The New York Times greeted the world on Sept. 21, 1970. It was so named because it appeared opposite the editorial page… In the digital world… there is no geographical ‘Op-Ed,’ just as there is no geographical ‘Ed’ for Op-Ed to be opposite to.”

Kingsbury noted how opinion and news both use the same base nytimes.com URL — and that understanding ‘op-ed’ required prior knowledge of journalism and a newspaper’s so-called church and state structure. The “guest essay” label, she hoped, would be more immediately informative.

“Terms like Op-Ed are, by their nature, clubby newspaper jargon; we are striving to be far more inclusive in explaining how and why we do our work,” she said.