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Fact or opinion exercises encourage students to read critically and evaluate the truth in what they are reading. This strategy can be used with either expository or narrative texts and with students about 9 years old and older. It works as follows:
1. Explain the difference between fact and opinion and give examples.
2. Starting with the examples, ask the students what clues are in the text that can alert the reader to whether it is a fact or an opinion.
3. Have students add other clues from their own experiences.
4. Discuss why it is important to distinguish fact from opinion.
5. On an overhead transparency, show the students a list of statements that they will evaluate as fact or opinion.
 If the statement is fact, the students determine where they could find information to verify it (e.g., encyclopedias, dictionaries, textbooks, newspapers, internet).
Ask them to write their proof by the statement.
6. Work with the students for the first three or four statements.
7. Ask the students to circle the clues in each statement.
8. The students complete the rest of the statements independently, in small groups, or in pairs.
9. For a supplement to this activity, copy paragraphs out of the students' textbooks. Have the students work in pairs to underline opinion statements in red and factual statements in blue.
10. After completing the task, the students discuss their responses.
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