Giving students opportunities to discuss and write can occur with almost any activity in the classroom. Through discussion, they practice using language (in its oral/signed form) to communicate, inform, and negotiate. Through writing they practice the same skills using only English language. Children can compare things such as two or more stories, characters, objects, processes.
1. Select two or three different nursery rhymes, fairy tales, or children’s stories that you have read to the children.
2. Reread them to the students, if necessary, explaining that they must find ways the selections are similar and ways they are different.
3. As the children identify the similarities and differences, write them on the board. For example, if the stories were “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “The Three Little Pigs,” and “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” the lists of similarities and differences might look like this:
How are the stories the same?
a. The stories all have animals in them.
b. They all have animal groups of three.
c. The animals in the stories can talk.
d. The stories are all pretend.
How are the stories different?
a. One story has a person (a little girl) in it.
b. One story has a wolf.
c. One story has trolls.
4. Have the students, individually or in pairs, write a paragraph explaining the similarities and differences of the three stories.
5. Children share their paragraphs with their classmates and discuss their differences.
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