Compare and Contrast

Today's lesson is on compare and contrast and was used with a group of fifth graders. I began by reading aloud two books. The first book was The Three Little Pigs by Bernadette Watts.

Most students were familiar with the story, but I wanted  it to be really fresh in their minds for our compare and contrast activity. Then I read aloud a great book called The Three Little Tamales by Eric A. Kimmel. The students loved how this book had some Spanish mixed throughout.

These two stories were just similar enough to be perfect for comparing and contrasting. After I read the two books aloud, we created a venn diagram together as an anchor chart.

Students had a copy of the anchor chart to fill out in their reader's notebooks as well.

Next we moved on to the guided practice portion of the lesson. Students independently read the book National Geographic: Storms!. This book is about different types of severe storms. We picked two types of storms from the book to compare and contrast. (Hurricanes and Tornadoes) Together we completed a venn diagram in students' reader's notebooks.

For the independent practice portion of the lesson, students independently read a short story about two girls that went to space camp. In this story, both girls enjoyed space camp, but one wants to become an astronaut and the other is more interested in mission control. 

As an assessment, I had students independently complete a venn diagram in their reader's notebooks comparing and contrasting the two girls. 

Overall I was very pleased with the students' work. We still need to work on being very specific in our answers, but all the students hit on the major concepts of the story.