Teaching Comparison in Nonfiction
Create Life-Sized Visualizations to Compare Size and Measurement
Get your students to understand nonfiction comparisons by using this life-sized interactive approach.
Want to make those nonfiction comparisons really come to life? Visualizing helps students really understand how comparisons in nonfiction are beneficial to the reader. However, if students were to compare facts to a life-sized model they would really get “the big picture!”
Comparisons
Comparisons are a text feature used in nonfiction books to help readers visualize how big something is or how much something weighs by comparing its measurement to an object people are more familiar with. Comparisons can be found in nonfiction just as a picture, just as a sentence, or as a picture and sentence. Either way, the comparison helps the reader get a better understanding of an object’s measurement.
Introducing Comparisons
Students will first need an introduction to what comparisons are and how they work in nonfiction books. Begin by showing them comparisons through examples in books. Explain to them why authors use comparisons in nonfiction. Next have students search for more examples in nonfiction books. Then they can illustrate some examples by visualizing and then drawing them. This could be turned into a class book.
Actual Size
As students spend time pouring over nonfiction books searching for and finding examples of comparisons, start keeping a running list of examples they find. After you and your students have many examples, share the book Actual Size [Houghton Mifflin, 2004] by Steve Jenkins. This book shares the sizes of animals by showing them their actual size! Tell students that they will be creating life sized comparisons compared to you!
Life Sized Comparisons
Have students trace a life sized version of you on large bulletin board paper. (You may want to have the students decorate it and add a real photo of your face for more of an effect.) Next group students in pairs to begin creating their life sized comparisons. For example, the giant frog is as large as a computer keyboard. Tell them that they want to try to create life-sized versions of their objects. They will need to draw and cut out of paper a computer keyboard (the size of an actual keyboard) and then the giant frog as large as the keyboard. It might be helpful to have parent volunteers as an extra set of hands to help. Lastly, display your comparisons on a wall around the life-sized version of you.
This larger than life activity is sure to help your students truly understand what nonfiction comparisons are and how they help a reader understand nonfiction better.
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