Compare Two Authors on One Event

Start with the Venn diagram sheet, then use the chart sheets for longer comparisons. Ask students to back every difference with a detail from each text.

Compare a 1969 news report and a memoir about the first Moon landing in a chart. Two authors can write about the same event in very different ways, choosing different details, a different focus and a different purpose. The directions on the page read: Read both accounts of the first Moon landing. Then compare them on page 2. An answer key is included.

Yes, both. We made it for 6th Grade compare and contrast, and the page works the same whether it lands on a kitchen table or a center rotation. At home, most families go through it together and talk the answers out loud, and that talking is where most of the learning happens. In class it runs well as independent work while you pull a small group. Print one copy or thirty, whichever the day needs.

Each circle holds what is true of only one character, and the middle holds what they share. Talia makes checklists and Marco loves surprises, but both are best friends on the same trip.

The topic, theme, form and feeling. Compare a Poem and a Story uses a chart for The Last Night and The New Street, two texts about moving.

Not less accurate, just different in purpose. The memoir in Compare Two Authors on One Event shares one family's feelings, so it leaves out exact times that the news report gives.