After modeling my collection, they were excited to bring in something they had collected or would like to start collecting. Having their own collection allowed them to take greater ownership of their opinions and writings, which allowed students to become more empowered and engaged during this lesson sequence. Listening to their explanations during informal and formal writing conferences and prompting them to provide more details has helped my students improve their verbal communication and transfer to print. After the featured lesson, my students used the photograph of their collection taken with the class iPads, as a graphic to present their opinion writing. Students asked questions of their peers who were not in their group and gave specific positive feedback to the student presenters. As a continuation of this lesson sequence, my students learned about Georgia O'Keefe and selected a painting from her flower collections, to coincide with our plant unit, and wrote their opinion on the board giving three reasons for their opinion . Having already written opinion pieces on their collections, students had less difficulty giving detailed explanations of their opinions on the collections.