Opinion Writing with Otto Storage Stools

Last summer we were contacted by a lovely teacher from a school in Florida. She was teaching 4^th grade and her students’ curriculum for the upcoming year included opinion writing. She was looking for ways to give her students real world writing opportunities in order for them to learn to become strong writers. She felt that these experiences made it real to them, grabbed their attention more, and gave them a true sense of purpose rather than always using only made up writing tasks or only writing to respond to texts they read in class.

She inquired if Otto Storage would be willing to provide a free sample for her students so they could write a product review to practice and apply their opinion writing skills.

We really loved this idea and absolutely wanted to get involved. We happily agreed to sponsor 2 Otto Storage Stools for this great project.

The outcome was fabulous: the students worked in teams trying to put the Otto Storage Stools together, using the assembly instructions that come with the Otto Storage Stools. After the assembly they were asked to write down their thoughts and opinions on the process: what worked, what was difficult and how did they like the Otto Storage Stools.

Not only did we receive a selection of these opinion essays, we’ve also received fabulous pictures documenting the process and the students even created a film together explaining their project:

And luckily we’re allowed to share all of it. The students had a blast and really enjoyed the task. We received this lovely feedback from their teacher:

They LOVED this – never have seen them so excited to write before!

Apparently some steps of the assembly were easier than others and kind of reflect the feedback we get from adults who are trying to assembly the Otto Storage Stools 😉

Enjoy reading their opinions!

Dear Otto Storage,

Thank you for the opportunity to build this stool. Thank you for a fun way to help with our opinion writing, so we don’t have to do some silly paragraph about if we should wear suits to school or not.

Thank you for the stools and letting us have the opportunity to build and give you our opinion if we like it or not.

At first I was nervous to work in a big group on something so fun, but when we started, we all started having fun putting it together.

Step 1 was kinda easy to put together because we had room to snap it together.

Step 2 was easy too because we had room to build it and snap it together and step 3 was easy too because for the same reason for step 1 and 2.

But step 4 and 5 was frustrating to build because we had no holes in it to get our hands through, because it was solid so we had to have someone to hold the pieces together.

6 was easy too because you would be already finished after we did 5 and 4.

Step 7 and 8 was hard because trying to line up the pieces and putting them together.

9 was easy because it was done after doing 7 and 8.

10 and 11 was hard to line up the pieces, but 12 was the easiest to do because all you had to do was put the lid together.

Together it came to be a pretty sturdy stool. To build it is really fun and was a fun challenge to overcome. When we were building it I had a big advantage because one of my favorite things to do is build with legos. Not small like 100 pieces, no I like to build like 2000 pieces lego sets so I had a big advantage building.

Dear Otto Storage,

Thank you for the opportunity to use this for a fun way on opinion writing. The stool that the 6 of us build was very fun and challenging. The hardest part of the stool was when we were clipping the stool together because when we clipped two of the sides together, one of the sides were loose again. Thank you for sending us the stools because it gave us a very fun activity to put the stool together.

On step one it was kind of hard because when we clip it, it would not clip together. The rest of them were easy besides step 7 and 8 because when we put it in it kept getting loose. Step 1, 2 and 3 were the same as step 6, 7 and 8. The easiest part was putting the lid. Thank you for bringing us the stools.

Dear Otto Storage,

Thank you for this opportunity for a fun way to do our opinion writing, we could have done it a more boring way but you guys gave us these amazing stools instead. Thank you so much for these stools. You guys are awesome! Before we started building the stools I was so excited to start building, I could not wait.

Putting the stools together was a little tricky.

Step 1 was pretty easy to slide the sides together.

On step 2 and 3 we had trouble snapping the align together.

On step 4 we had some trouble closing the sides.

Step 5 and 6 are the same thing as step 3 and 4.

Step 7 to 9 were pretty easy, all you had to do was snap the bottom of the sides together.

Step 10 and 11 were easy too all you did was snap the align together and it was easier than steps 2 and 3 because it had the exact place were the top of the side had to go.

Step 12 was also easy because all you had to do was put the top on.