January 2016 | Crafting Connections
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Compare and Contrast (Address the standards with this FREE activity!)

Saturday, January 30, 2016
There are countless opportunities to teach the concept of comparing and contrasting - you can have students compare themselves and a classmate, two seasons, two sports... the list goes on and on! I will admit, I was still doing these types of compare and contrast writing activities with 4th and 5th graders a few years back. I would start with a Venn diagram, and then I would have students write a few paragraphs. I was confident that I was giving my students (many English language learners) plenty of opportunities to correctly form compare and contrast paragraphs using the appropriate signal words.

This blog post contains a FREE compare and contrast reading activity! Materials are included so you can replicate the compare and contrast anchor chart and lesson for your own upper elementary and middle school students.


Recently, however, I've begun to question whether those past activities were enough. A few months ago, I was looking at the Common Core State Standards, and I was surprised to see how often some sort of comparing and contrasting task are included in the 5th grade reading standards! Therefore, I set out to create some materials that incorporate reading into my compare & contrast unit, by specifically addressing RL.5.3.
  • RL.5.3:  Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events, in a story or drama, drawing on specific details from the text.
I created some materials that I will share at the end of this post, but my main purpose for writing this blog post is to share the following lesson with you. This lesson uses the book Dinosaurs Before Dark, the first Magic Tree House book by Mary Pope Osbourne. (Amazon affiliate link below)

I chose this simple book because I have found that nearly every fifth grader has read this or another Magic Tree House book in the past... or a teacher has read it to them. That said, I truly believe you could successfully facilitate this lesson with students who have never read the book, as well.

Prior to the beginning of class, you need to cut apart the sentence strips and recreate the basics on the anchor chart shown below. (Leave the Venn diagrams blank for now.)
This blog post contains a FREE compare and contrast reading activity! Materials are included so you can replicate the compare and contrast anchor chart and lesson for your own upper elementary and middle school students. This blog post contains a FREE compare and contrast reading activity! Materials are included so you can replicate the compare and contrast anchor chart and lesson for your own upper elementary and middle school students.

I would begin class by holding up the book and asking students who have previously read the book to raise their hands. I would state that these will be our book experts, and those who haven't read the book before might be asking them some questions.

I would then point out the Venn diagram, and tell them that we are going to be comparing and contrasting the characters, settings, and events within this book. After a quick review of what it means to compare and contrast, I would distribute a sentence strip to as many students as possible. (There are 18 strips, so a few students would have to share.)

Students would take turns reading their statement to the class. During his or her turn, each student needs to:
  1. determine whether their statement makes a strong enough comparison to list on the Venn diagram.
  2. determine whether their statement belongs on the setting, characters, or events Venn diagram.
  3. determine whether their statement is a compare statement or a contrast statement.
  4. determine what key words should be written on the chart. (Complete sentences should be avoided on the Venn diagrams- key words only!)

This blog post contains a FREE compare and contrast reading activity! Materials are included so you can replicate the compare and contrast anchor chart and lesson for your own upper elementary and middle school students.

When I started teaching, I quickly learned that some students will state very shallow comparison statements if you let them. Therefore, I try to teach my students to write "deeper" comparison statements- ones that focus on character traits, experiences, or perspectives. For this activity, if a student correctly determines that he or she was given an unimportant comparison statement, we simply toss the statement in the garbage and do not include it on the Venn diagram.

This blog post contains a FREE compare and contrast reading activity! Materials are included so you can replicate the compare and contrast anchor chart and lesson for your own upper elementary and middle school students.

This blog post contains a FREE compare and contrast reading activity! Materials are included so you can replicate the compare and contrast anchor chart and lesson for your own upper elementary and middle school students.

The finished anchor chart looks like this:
This blog post contains a FREE compare and contrast reading activity! Materials are included so you can replicate the compare and contrast anchor chart and lesson for your own upper elementary and middle school students.

Once we have completed the anchor chart, I would have the students help me write a compare/contrast paragraph using some of the signal words. (I usually just focus on the "characters" Venn diagram. This is where our "experts" would come in, because after each statement, I would  require students to support it with evidence from the text. I would use the document camera to project my writing, and have students copy it into their notebooks. We would then highlight the signal words we used.
This blog post contains a FREE compare and contrast reading activity! Materials are included so you can replicate the compare and contrast anchor chart and lesson for your own upper elementary and middle school students.

If you want to download this lesson to use in your own classroom, please click HERE.

If you are looking for additional compare & contrast activities to use with your upper elementary students, please check out this bundle. You can also take a closer look at any of the individual resources that interest you!

Teach your students to compare and contrast characters, settings, and events by using this bundle of compare and contrast activities.


Thanks for stopping by today!

~Deb

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