Ready-to-teach lesson
Compare Two Accounts of the Same Fact
Meet the Meerkat - Grade K - Short lesson
TIME
OBJECTIVE
15 minutes Find a fact the book gives twice, once in the meerkat's words and once in somebody else's, and say what changes.
Essential question: Why does this book say some things twice?
Materials
Text to mark
PRODUCT
Boxes for the meerkat's version and the other version of the same fact, side by side
- The book The answer pages and the two later pages copied
- Prepared passages: Passage 3, Passage 4, Passage 9, Passage 10
Lesson sequence
1 What the meerkat said - 4 min
- Passage 3 - a meerkat lying flat on a mound with its tail curled up
- Passage 4 - four meerkats standing upright together against clouds
- Passage 9 - meerkats crossing open desert under a bank of cloud
- Passage 10 - a wide desert view with a cloud bank and a flat-topped tree
- Focus:
- Facts given in the first person
- Teacher model:
- Read these answers and write what the meerkat says about where and how it lives.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 3, Passage 4 2 Now the other voice - 7 min
- Teacher direction:
- Mark where these pages say something the meerkat already said.
- Expected answer:
- Living together, and liking the warm part of the day.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 9, Passage 10 3 What changed - 4 min
- Teacher direction:
- Say what is different about the words in the two versions.
- Expected answer:
- One says I and is about this meerkat; the other says they and is about all of them.
- Prepared text:
- Passage 4, Passage 10
Support & extension
Above: Say which of the two versions of a fact tells a reader more, and why the book might want both.
Below: Find one thing the meerkat says about itself and one page that says it
Assessment
- Pairs a first-person answer with a third-person page
- Notices the pronoun changes from I to they
- Says the second version is about all meerkats
page 1
page 1
page 2