Mighty Ducks! A Compare Contrast Activity!

My elementary students seldom initiate conversations without prompting, but last week my school held a fundraiser that changed my normally tepid sharers to a level of wonder that could not be suppressed. What had them wondering, conversing, sharing and comparing were small plastic duck key chains that looked like celebrities. While I am not one to judge interests, I am an opportunistic SLP that will play to the interest areas of my students to get the best bang-for-my-buck. So what I did was find my own ducks so we could compare and contrast and infer information. You can get your set here.


Here is what the ducks look like:

After pulling two ducks out of the bag at random I had students use a Venn diagram to brain storm ideas before writing about the the ducky similarities and differences paragraph form.

After we finished with the ducks we moved on to characters in novels they were reading in their classrooms. They loved starting with the ducks before tackling the daunting task of grade level text and complex character contrasting. This activity worked well for all! 

What are your students interested in this year that you have incorporated into therapy?