Parent Tips: Lesson 2.9

Most kids learn opinion writing very early in their school career because kids love telling people how they think the world should work. June Writers Academy also has a lesson and series of practices on the form in Chapter 2, though largely to help your child develop the physical stamina to write at the paragraph level and to solidify their mental process of going from thought to complete paragraph.

We also introduce the Ancient Greek rhetorical tools of ethos (character authority), logos (logic and evidence), pathos (feeling), and kairos (opportunity/fit with the moment and audience), which help kids begin to understand that they can make choices about how they present their arguments in order to best influence their audience. This insight is a Big Brain Leap for almost all kids. A solid grasp of rhetorical tools will help your kids analyze other people’s writing, and—hopefully—also make discussions/arguments in your home a little more mature. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to explain to your child that their pathos-heavy plea for more candy doesn’t satisfy your need to hear more logos about how they’ll take better care of their teeth, and have them take you seriously?

We will cover a richer form of opinion analysis and writing in Level 3: Texts Under Scrutiny. Please keep this in mind if you give your child feedback on his or her text.