Comparing and Contrasting Stories

Last week our weekly theme was sports. As a part of our lessons, we read Maria Joins the Team and Carlos Joins the Team from Reading A-Z. The main purpose of the lesson was to have the students retell the story and answer multiple choice questions about the text in order to teach them the strategy of "looking back" and to assess their comprehension. The reason I chose these books is because they are the same story but with slight changes. After reading the first story, the students retold the story to friends and then answered questions about the text. Then we read the second story. As we read, the students began to have that "light bulb" moment when they make connections or notice something unique. They quickly realized the stories were the same. To help them express their thoughts, we created a class Double Bubble Map to compare and contrast the stories. Fellow teachers, Reading A-Z has many different leveled readers that can be used for this purpose.