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Compare and Contrast Kindergarten Style

Common Core Standards state that Kindergarten students are to compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of characters in familiar stories (with prompting and support).  At our school, we assess this standard in the 4th quarter for our Kindergarten students.

I knew that my special ed Kindergarten students were going to need A LOT of support to (hopefully) compare and contrast two stories.  We started off with the traditional 3 Little Pigs story that my students have heard several times.


Since we're in Hawaii, we read The 3 Little Pua'a. Pua'a means pig in Hawaiian.  I will admit that this book has A LOT of Hawaiian language.  I obviously need to spend a lot more time listening to Surfin' Through Second's Hawaiian language blog post {click here} before I can read this one.  I had to pass the book off to my aide.  Thank goodness for her!


I knew that if my kids were going to have any success with comparing and contrasting I was going to have to give them visuals and really break it down.  So I made this chart and we went through each story step-by-step.


By putting the events side-by-side, we were able to discuss if things were same or different.  We then listed all of the things we could think of that were same and different on a separate chart.  For my students that a hard time coming up with ideas, I referred them back to the visual chart.  The visual cues helped some of them that were really struggling.


Afterwards, they had to complete their assessment.  I covered up my Compare and Contrast chart but left up the chart with the details and pictures for each story as a reference.  Normally, I would have had my students attempt to write their own sentences.  They're still developing their writing skills.  Since I was running short on time and have a ton of assessing left to do, I had the students respond orally and wrote their answers down.

Some of my students seemed to have a pretty good grasp on the similarities and differences in the stories.


Unfortunately, I had a couple that still struggled even with visuals and lots of prompting.  Maybe they're just not developmentally ready for this?


Do you have any helpful tips for teaching comparing and contrasting?  Some of my students need another strategy for sure.

5 comments:

  1. Hello,

    I am a second year kindergarten teacher and I am reviewing the concept of comparing and contrasting. I taught a lesson I thought was great but the lesson was a flop and I left them probably more confused about what comparing and contrasting. So I know I'll have to reteach but reading this post I definitely see where I went wrong with the text I used and structured the chart. Thanks for sharing!

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