Young Teacher Love

By Kristine Nannini

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

19 Comments

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.

Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters with FREEBIES! - Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini

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!
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
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.
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
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.
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
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!
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
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.
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
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. 
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
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.
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini

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.

Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
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 assessment to assess them on standard 5.RL.3 from my 5th Grade Common Core English Language Arts Assessments and Teaching Notes.
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
 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!
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini

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

English Language Arts Assessments and Teaching Notes by Kristine Nannini

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

Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini
Compare and Contrast Two or More Characters in a Story {Freebies Included}- Young Teacher Love by Kristine Nannini

Do you need more passages to help you teach character analysis? Check out my Characters: Differentiated Reading Passages and Questions resource. I provide teachers with 10 differentiated character reading passages. Each passage has five short answer questions for students to analyze characters. Click HERE or the button below to check them out. If you download the preview, you can see the entire resource.

Characters: Differentiated Reading Passages and Questions by Kristine Nannini

This resource is now bundled.

The first bundle includes 10 Fiction Differentiated Passages and Questions. Click HERE or the button below.

This bundle includes 20 total resources – 10 Informational Text and 10 Fiction Text Differentiated Passages and Questions. Click HERE or the button below.

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Comments

  1. I too believe that the double bubble map is great for the upper grades. I usually have students color code the double map using different colors. I usually incorporate art blends into this. For example: I might do one set of differences in yellow, one set of differences in blue, and then the similarities would be in green to show that they are combined (similar). This is a great post! Thank you for taking the time to write such an informative post, and I will definitely be reviewing your blog posts as I plan for next year!

    Reply

  3. This looks great! I love using Verdi for character comparison. I also like to have students compare and contrast Verdi from the beginning of the book to the end.

    Reply

  6. Do you have another book that you would recommend instead of Verdi? I really like this lesson, but am petrified of snakes!

    Reply

  7. I really want to commend you for supporting this thinking map. I have been teaching high school for almost 10 years and even students at this level need these graphic organizers.

    Reply

  8. Hi! I absolutely love your blog and resources! I am using your compare and contrast lesson with my students. I was wondering, how do you score the writing formative assessment piece?

    Thanks so much!

    Reply

  10. I love your compare/contrast lesson! Do you have a title of a short text for formative assessment at a fourth grade level?

    Reply

  11. Hi Kristine
    I hope you are doing great.
    I would like to thank you for your great efforts you did on your blog. Actually it helped me alot. Thanks again.

    TARIK

    Reply

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Welcome to Young Teacher Love!

Kristine Nannini

I am an elementary school teacher, curriculum writer, educational blogger, and founder of Young Teacher Love. I love bringing excitement and innovation to education. Welcome! I’m so glad you found my classroom!