End of School Year Lessons Part 2

I was thrilled to see how well our newcomers did while learning character development. But more so, I was excited to hear how much they enjoyed reading the stories and how well they understood them. 
I have so much faith in the hard work Saddleback puts into each and every book that makes it to our classrooms. I enjoy using these books to teach our newcomers. 
This blog post is a continuation of a previous post - to read about lesson #1, click HERE.

Lesson #2

• Review: Writing complete sentences using characters and settings found in the previous story.
• New topic: Compare and Contrast events in two mystery/suspense stories.

We started our lesson by predicting what our new story was going to be about.  Predictions can be provided in English and/or in their home language. Students accessed the book digitally and flipped through the pages to get a better idea of the story. This strategy also helps to get students engaged in the new story and gauge to see if they'll like it or not. 
After our prediction, I read the story out loud  while students followed along and tracking the text. There were some comprehension checks while reading just to make sure students were following along.
After reading the story we identified a list of characters and settings and used this list to create complete sentences - Our sentences were simple but they were able to create them themselves and read aloud on their own.  See Jamboard slides 7-11 to see students' independent work. 

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click image to access Jamboard

Comparing and contrasting stories: 
To teach the concept and the language of compare and contrast, I used this image of an orange and an apple. Students were able to tell me how these two items compare (similar/same) & how these items contrast (different/not the same) - It was a fun activity and students were engaged blurting out answers.

Once students understood the concept of comparing and contrasting, we were ready to begin tackling our stories. I began by showing students the stories side by side just like the fruits in the example above and shared one similarity and one difference between the stories. We made sure that anything we added was found in the text and not just our inferences.

Once I modeled, I let students help me out by sharing one more similarity and difference. This gave an idea of their understanding of the assignment. 
See students' independent work completed on pages 14th - 19th. 
To see the entire Jamboard, click HERE.

This activity gave me a good idea of their text comprehension. By providing text evidence and placing them in the correct box, I can tell that comprehension took place therefore language acquisition happened too!

Be sure to check our next lesson when we create our own stories using the elements we learned in these two stories we read. 
If you have a different way to teach compare and contrast, please, share it in the comments. I'd love to learn from you and add tools to my toolbox.

​Click HERE to read Part 3

​Thank you for reading!