Digging Deeper Into Compare & Contrast

Hello friends!

This blog post is one that has been in my head & my heart for QUITE a while!  I know we all have new routines, decorating, class lists, and labeling on the brain.  Am I right?  Well, I’m sharing a group of texts with you that marks one of the BEST weeks I had all year!  I'm really hoping you'll find these in your OWN school library!

Background:

I live in a “Standards-Based” world.  Yes, I’ve LABELED the standards as our curriculum TOLD us it covered without ever really DIGGING into them.  Since I live in the SB world, I try to sneak in OTHER standards in a meaningful way—even if it isn’t the target for the week. 

The Plan: 

America’s Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle by David Adler was the story of the week.  

We decided that RI 3.6, covering Point of View, would be our focus since it is a biography. Perfect.  Sounds great!  While perusing the manual for other things, I noticed the blurb (same blurb I have seen for many years) to look at other biographies by David Adler.  Great!  Note to self & my plans: Go to school library in the AM and find another one to read aloud.  Coded for RL 3.9, Compare & Contrast stories by same author/character/series. Bam!  I have other standard to sneak in.  I’m set.

The Action:

What happened within my team throughout the week was the kind of “organic”, “in the moment” –eh, sort of—teaching that I love!  What I found were all of these AMAZINGLY beautiful, vocabulary-rich biographies!  As the week progressed (and yes, we decided to spill over to the next week), we used these mentor texts…..and a few more not available at the time of this quick picture.

Each time we read a new text, we’d discuss and create anchor charts to identify setting, character traits, theme & plot.  The historical background for each was quite rich!

We culminated the activity by creating Venn Diagrams using ReadWriteThink's interactive application.  I modeled on the Promethian Board how to set up the page.  

Find the link by clicking HERE

Then they set off into small groups based on the two books they wanted to compare.  The books were available as a reference, as needed, since we didn’t have class sets.  The discussions that took place were amazing!  Some groups chose the enrichment project by using three books rather than two.  Don’t you just LOVE it when your 3rdies want to stretch the limit!  This application is really easy, too!  I had my students save their diagrams and submit them on our class Padlet page.  They were able to present their diagrams to the class from MY computer, too!

Since we need to spiral back to the standards, using mentor texts became the focus in my classroom.  Each time—I let them become more and more independent.  Later, they created their own tri-folds to identify setting, character traits, theme and plot.  Group Venn Diagrams became independent, as well.  It was just awesome!

I’d highly recommend these other authors/series that we used to dig deeper into this standard.

Judith Viorst

Alexander and the No Good, Very Bad Day

Alexander, Who Used to Be Rich Last Sunday

Alexander Who is Not Moving

Patricia Polocco

Thank You, Mr. Falker

Junkyard Wonders

...who am I kidding!  You can't stop with these two!!

Chris Van Allsburg

Two Bad Ants
The Wretched Stone

The Garden of Abdul Gasazi

---same here!  So many amazing tales!

I'm am certainly hoping that you will LOVE these David Adler biographies as much as we did!  It really spurred an interest in a different genre while touching into eras in our history in a meaningful way.