Screen Time: Close Reading Article, Opinion Writing Paper, & iPhone Craft

Description

Want a relevant and meaningful opinion writing topic for your students? Screen time is a hot topic among adults (especially parents and teachers), so why shouldn’t it be a topic that kids can also educate themselves about? Have your students read the included close reading article about the pros and cons of screen time for kids. It’s a great jumping-off point for in-depth class discussions!

Assign this writing prompt: “Should kids have more or less screen time?” This resource comes with a kid-friendly final draft paper for their writing assignment. There are 3 options for writing lines so that you can customize for your grade level or individual students: large primary dotted lines, medium primary dotted lines and regular lines.

If you’d also like a fun craftivity to display with their published writing, students can make their own iPhone where they list pros and cons for screen time.

On a personal note- after doing this activity in my own classroom, many of my kids took away some real-life lessons that could potentially stick with them. A parent shared with me that their child asked the family if they could play a board game instead of watching a show because they learned at school that screen time gives us “less personal interaction.” That right there told me that this is a reading and writing assignment worth repeating!