0 Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}!

I'm back for the next part of our character development lesson using Verdi by Janell Cannon. For this lesson, I will be sharing how we used the book to compare and contrast two or more characters in a story, drawing on specific details from the text.

To read the first blog post in this series, and to grab the free Inferring Character Traits Graphic Organizer, click HERE. To check out my other blog post series on character development, click HERE and HERE!

Since our last lesson on inferring character traits through dialogue, my students learned that there are a number of different ways that an author reveals information about a character in a text. An author reveals information about a character through:

• physical traits (both explicit and inferred)
• actions
• thoughts
• dialogue
• interactions with other characters

Once my students had a solid understanding of characterization, we jumped right into comparing and contrasting. While rating and dating our understanding for our Student Data Tracking Binders, I quickly had students show me their level of understanding for comparing and contrasting. With a quick rate it/date it, I learned that my students had very little background knowledge on this concept. Not a big deal! A quick mini-lesson on comparing and contrasting did the trick! 

With this anchor chart, we discussed the terms compare and contrast. I guided students with the idea that authors create relationships between characters, settings, and events in a text by developing the interactions among story elements. Good readers can identify the relationships between story elements by comparing and contrasting them. 

While I love using venn diagrams, an even better tool (in my opinion) to compare and contrast in the upper grades is a double bubble thinking map. 

The reason I like using a double bubble thinking map is because it requires a bit more depth of thought by the students. I love that contrasting requires students to think in terms of point and counterpoint. I promise you they are extremely easy to use!

Some guiding questions that students need to keep in mind in order to compare and contrast and to help them construct their double bubble maps include: 

• What are the similarities and differences between these two things? 
• How are these two things alike and different? 
• Which similarities do you think are most important?
• Are there any details that are unique to one thing and not the other? 

Even though the standard calls for students to also compare and contrast settings and events in a text, for this lesson we only focused on characters. After re-reading Verdi an additional time, we worked together to construct our double bubble thinking map. 

Side note: color coding your double bubble thinking map is a great strategy for students that may need additional help, especially if this is the first time they are seeing it. I've included this as a freebie that you can grab at the end of this post. 

I think this is such a phenomenal visual that perfectly hits the standard on comparing and contrasting two characters. 

Even though we worked together as a class to fill out this double bubble, students also filled out their own.

Once we filled out the double bubble thinking maps, as a formative assessment, students wrote their own written responses to compare and contrast the two characters.

You can grab this free formative assessment and a free double bubble thinking map at the end of this post!

This formative assessment is a great way to quickly gauge your students' understanding of the standard. 

Throughout the rest of the week, students used double bubble thinking maps to compare and contrast the characters in their own self-selected texts. 

At the end of the week, I gave them their summative assessments to assess them on standard 5.RL.3 from my 5th Grade Common Core ELA/Literacy Assessments and Teaching Notes. 

I had to get an extreme closeup of this answer because I have to say, I am pretty impressed with their responses!

On top of that, my teacher heart skipped a beat when I saw this on a student's reading passage! He was annotating the text without any prompting from me! Best day ever!

Check out these reading passages and assessments to use in your classroom HERE!

Grab a free copy of my Verdi formative assessment and color coded double bubble thinking map HERE!

Thanks for reading!