Description
What our Compare/Contrast Non-Fiction Text Versions lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Compare/Contrast Non-Fiction Text Versions lesson plan teaches students strategies for comparing and contrasting two different texts about the same topic. This lesson is for students in 2nd grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the yellow box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand. To prepare for this lesson ahead of time, you can find two passages for the activity and copy the handouts.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. If you’d like to add to the activity worksheet, you can use addition passages or distribute two versions of a nonfiction topic summary, having students complete the chart after reading the passages. For an additional activity, you can have your students use the internet to find and compare different websites related to the same topic, comparing and contrasting the information they find. Students can also meet with a partner and compare and contrast their families, likes and dislikes, and more.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
COMPARE/CONTRAST NON-FICTION TEXT VERSIONS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Nonfiction Text
The Compare/Contrast Non-Fiction Text Versions lesson plan includes three content pages. The lesson begins by reminding students that they sometimes read make-believe stories, and sometimes read about real things, like they do in science or social studies class. We call texts or books about real people or things nonfiction texts.
More than one person can write a nonfiction text about a topic. If you want to learn about dogs, you can find different books written by different people about them. These different books might focus on different things. One might be about dog breeds, another about having a dog as a pet, and another about things that veterinarians need to know to care for them.
If you read two or more texts or books about one subject, you might want to compare (find similarities) and contrast (find differences) them. The books might have conflicting information, in which case you might need to find another source to tell you what’s correct.
The lesson shows this using two passages about horses. It shows how you would compare and contrast the information from the two passages. To compare, you might note that both passage tell you that people have used horses for 5,000 years. To contrast, you might note that the two passages share different details about horses. We can use a Venn diagram to more effectively show what is similar and different in the two passages. There’s an example Venn diagram, using the information from the two passages about horses, in the lesson.
If you wanted to find even more information about horses, you could look in other books or on the Internet. Some of the information you find will be the same, but some of it will be different.
When you compare and contrast, you should focus on the important details and points of the topic in the two (or more) texts you’re using. The lesson includes a second example: two passages about Abraham Lincoln. It then shows another example of a Venn diagram, filled in with information about the two passages. Students can use this example to reinforce what they’ve learned during the lesson.
COMPARE/CONTRAST NON-FICTION TEXT VERSIONS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Compare/Contrast Non-Fiction Text Versions lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
COMPARE AND CONTRAST ACTIVITY WORKSHEET
For the activity worksheet, the teacher will read two different passages about the same topic aloud, reading each more than once. The students will compare and contrast the information in the passages as their teacher reads. They will list things that are the same and different in the passages.
Students can work in pairs for this activity if you’d prefer.
VENN DIAGRAM PRACTICE WORKSHEET
For the practice worksheet, students will compare and contrast two nonfictions texts using a Venn diagram.
COMPARE/CONTRAST NON-FICTION TEXT VERSIONS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
The homework assignment asks students to read two passages and answer the questions listed on the worksheet.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
