Powerful Compare and Contrast with Ancestry Project and a Freebie | Mentoring in the Middle

Powerful Compare and Contrast with Ancestry Project and a Freebie

Last week, we spent a fair amount of time looking at nonfiction text structures, something that my students "sort of" knew.

I had read a blog post by Mary, of Teaching with a Mountain View, where she explored this very topic, and I used some of the suggestions she had.  You can read her blog post here.

On the first day, I had students use their interactive notebooks to get a grasp on each of the five types: cause and effect, compare and contrast, descriptive, sequence of events, and problem and solution.

The second day, we took a look at short passages about Alcatraz, thanks to Lovin' Lit who generously gave them to Mary to post.  The text structure for each passage was given, so I had the students work with a partner to find and underline the key words that identified each kind of structure.  We discussed those as a class to make sure we got them all.

From Reading to Writing

The next day, we picked a topic -- chocolate chip cookie dough -- and I modeled how to write some sentences for each text structure.  Then they picked their own topics, and wrote sentences for them in their notebooks.  (Sorry that the picture of my Activboard is so lousy!)

Taking it to the Next Level

For students to really grasp these concepts, it seemed important to have them write in those styles.  So I created an ancestry project for them to work on.   You can find it in my TpT store, or, if you subscribe to my mailing list, you'll receive it for FREE!

I'll write about that project, and the importance of teaching explicit directions for comparing and contrasting in a later blog post.

Have a good week!




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