Ready-to-teach lesson
Compare and Contrast
Diary of a Spider - Grade 3 - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
20 minutes Compare this book with Diary of a Worm and say what the two share and where they differ.
PRODUCT
A comparison chart, and one dinner described twice Essential question: Two books, the same world.
What changes when the other one tells it?
Materials
Text to mark
- Both books - this one and Diary of a Worm The dinner-table page of the other book
- One comparison chart each
- Passage 1 - two spiders on a pencil, one in a fedora
- Passage 10 - a silk overnight bag, and a thought bubble of the worms' dinner table
- Prepared passages: Passage 1, Passage 10, Passage 22
Lesson sequence
1 Launch - 4 min
- Passage 22 - a leaf for a boat, and a drinks can lettered SPIDER'S
- CLUBHOUSE
- Focus:
- Two books, one shape
- Teacher direction:
- Put the two books side by side, closed, and ask what the class expects from the titles. Then open both first pages and let them find what is the same. Teacher note: Diary of a Worm is the other book
- Prepared text:
- Passage 1 2 Teacher model - 6 min
- Teacher model:
- I open the spider's sleepover page and read one sentence. Then I find the dinner-table picture in the other book, and hold them next to each other. It is the same table, the same mushroom cap, the same worm in the same red cap. So the two books are not just alike, they are happening in the same place - and each one has the other's hero in it as somebody's friend.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 10 3 What the two books share - 10 min
- Focus:
- Form, cast and last page
- Teacher direction:
- Using Passages 1, 10 and 22, and the other book, write down what the two diaries have in common.
page 1
- Expected answer:
- Both are diaries with a dated entry on every page, written as I by a small creature about an ordinary school year. Both open with a grandparent laying down three things to remember. Both have the same two friends in them, seen from the other side: the spider sleeps over at Worm's house and dreads the leaves for dinner, and the picture of that dinner is the same table drawn in the worm's book. Both are furnished out of things people have thrown away. And both last entries are dated August 1 and say the same kind of thing - the worm that people forget they are there, the spider that people judge all spiders by the few that bite.
- Student product:
- A comparison chart: same, and different
- Prepared text:
- Passage 1, Passage 10, Passage 22
Support & extension
Above: Both books end on the same date with a wish about being misunderstood. Explain what the author is doing by making them match.
Below: Fill the comparison chart, then write about the dinner from both sides.
Assessment
- Says both books are diaries with dates
- Says both are written as I by a small creature
- Says the spider and the worm are friends in both
- Notices the same dinner table in both books
- Says both last entries are about being misunderstood
page 2