Compare and Contrast activity!

     This is my first post and I have to give all the credit to Teaching with a Mountain View! She did a great job at creating an engaging activity to introduce students to compare and contrast. I had been contemplating how to start teaching this concept to my students when I came across this activity. It has a picture book, involves food, and is funny! A perfect lesson!

     This lesson uses the book Apples and Oranges by Sara Pinto. I have my students sit on the carpet as I introduce the words compare and contrast. Then we go through the book together as they fill out the worksheet that goes along with it. For each page there are two items the students need to compare and contrast (such as an apple and an orange). Then it asks them to guess what they both don't have. I decided to have the students fill out the "They both don't have..." column on their own. Then I would turn the page. If the students got it right (they rarely do, because the book comes up with some crazy things such as apples and oranges both don't have glasses) then they got a little reward. This keeps the students very engaged and kept them on task. They could only participate in the fun challenge when they could come up with three ways that they compared and contrasted.

    I had students giggling and laughing throughout this whole lesson because they couldn't believe what this author had come up with. 

    If you are interested in the activity and getting the worksheet here is a a link to the blog Teaching with a Mountain View.